___________
Goshka Macuga Somnambulist, 2006
Carved wood, fibreglass, real hair, fabric clothes

 

_____________
Paul Fryer Lilith, 2008
Paul Fryer is a London-based artist who humanizes biblical figures by giving them tortured bodies. Among his sculptural installations are Lucifer tangled in telegraph cords, Jesus in an electric chair, and winged Lilith pinned down like a taxidermy insect. Fryer depicts pain and human fallibility, brilliantly dethroning Christian icons to make them more tangible, commiserable, and flawed.

 

______________
Christina Bothwell Little Dream, 2015
There is an unsettling merging of both fragility and permanence throughout Christina’s work: tomb-like bodies forged in stone and glass, yet rendered vulnerable by their transparency. One feels like a guilty voyeur, being allowed to peer into spaces not usually exposed.

 

_____________
Sam Jinks Untitled (Drowned boy), 2013
silicone, pigment, resin and human hair

 

_____________
IRWIN Corpse of Art. 2003
The work is a response to the commentary of one critic who declared a series of Malevich’s recordings, reinterpretations, and appropriations a corpse of art (as opposed to the live artistic value of the original). Irwin took this declaration literally and reconstructed the body of Kazimir Malevich in his coffin according to the photograph taken in the House of the Artist Union in Leningrad in 1935. The artist is laid out in a coffin designed by Suetin according to Malevich’s architectons and planits (which are models of his utopian architecture). The lid of the coffin is decorated with a circle and a square, the frontal view of the coffin reveals his famous cross. Above the corpse, Malevich’s painting Black Square is displayed, and next to the corpse there stands a vase of lilies.

 

_____________
Arseny Zhilyaev Yuri-1, fragmet of Cradle of Humankind, 2015
The installation depicts an unsettling imaginary image of a far-off future in which humans have spread into outer space that changed the role of the Earth. The planet was abandoned and turning into a museum-reservation called ‘The Cradle of Humankind’, dedicated to the origins of life and civilization. The reservation is part of a network of museums commemorating historic figures and key events in the history of civilization. Museum presents artifacts from the imaginary past and weird merging the aesthetics of Russian Cosmim that inspired Soviet space program with the ultimate commodification of ultimate capitalism, a modernistic aspiration to radical innovation with a preservation impulse of Orthodox Christianity.

 

____________
John Miller The Corpse, 2006
What’s in a corpse? Well, food, of course. At the end of Satyricon, the Roman novel that might have been written by Nero’s arbiter elegantiae, or fashion advisor, the will of an old man who has died and who might have left a vast fortune is read to a group of fortune hunters. In order to have access to his wealth, they are told, they have to eat his dead body. In Fellini’s Satyricon, this ending of the book, which is extant only in fragments, is quite a prominent scene. Some of those seeking the inheritance actually feast on the body. They get to stay and take part in the wealth left behind. Their long search by ship, conjuring up Odysseus’s search for a return home, is over. The others, however, repulsed by the idea, and thinking that it might also be a ruse to deliberately subject them to ridicule and shame, get back on the ship and continue their journey, probably destined to arrive nowhere.

 

_____________
Julien Ceccaldi Hooded Corpse, 2018
skeleton model, melted plastic, chicken wire, synthetic wig, hoodie, underwear, socks, slipper and woodstain, and acrylic paint

 

_____________
Rebecca Stevenson Rapture, 2018
polyester, resin, and wax

 

______________
He Xiangyu The Death of Marat, 2011
Chinese artist He Xiangyu created a life-size fiberglass sculpture of dissident artist Ai Wei Wei’s corpse lying contorted face down on the ground. The title of the work ‘The Death of Marat’ refers to the 18th century portrait by Jaques-Louis David of the French revolutionary leader murdered in his bath. In a similar vein, His work reflects the political persecution of progressive thinkers and artists who have been silenced and imprisoned; hence, the choice to use Ai, most well-known for his openly critical stance against the Chinese government.

 

________________
Kiki Smith Untitled, 1990
Untitled is one of Smith’s earliest forays into large-scale sculpture using wax, a medium that would occupy her for years. Two dead figures, one male and one female, hang limply from adjacent poles; milk drips from the woman’s breasts and semen runs down the man’s legs.

 

_______________
Shen Shaomin The Day After Tomorrow, 2011
silica gel simulation, acrylic and fabric

 

_______________
Honorata Martin Moment, 2015
In a performance made in January 2015 the artist walked into the Radunia canal in Gdańsk, wearing a shirt that once belonged to her friend Emilia who died tragically. She stayed in the cold water long enough to lose the ability to move, collapse, immerse herself completely and let her body float freely.

 

______________
Teresa Margolles and SEMEFO Self portraits in the morgue, 1998
In the series Autorretratos en la Morgue/Self-Portraits in the Morgue, the artist as a figure here walks a precarious tightrope cross-referencing the clinic via her white lab coat and (social) scientific gaze (again the accessorizing sign of the artist’s accreditation in forensic medicine and science). As such, Margolles’s presence in the images keys traditions of (self-)portraiture, including or perhaps those within performance art, which locate the female body as a ripe, rife force field for resignification and cross-subjective identification. Notably, if clichéd critiques of the female self-portrait question the genre’s narcissism, Margolles’s Autorretratos en la Morgue/ Self-Portraits in the Morgue exude a “subversive narcissism” to present the body/self with disinterested interest.

 

______________
Käthe Kollwitz Woman with Dead Child, 1903
“When he was seven years old and I was working on the sculpture ‘Woman with Dead Child’, I did a drawing of myself, holding my youngest son Peter on my arm, in front of the mirror. That was very exhausting and I groaned. Then he said in his little child’s voice: Stop groaning, mum, it is going to be very beautiful … “

 

______________
Theodore Gericault Preparatory Paintings for the Raft of the Medusa, 1818
Théodore Géricault is well known French Romantic painter and the auteur of the famous Raft of the Medusa. The series of the preparatory paintings for his master piece, were naturalistic renderings of the morgue scenes of human remains in different stages of decomposition. His bizarre practice of stashing the abandoned and rotten corpse parts under his bed and at his atelier is far more terrifying and disturbing than his visual explorations.

 

_____________
Javier Pérez Carroña, 2014
The glass artwork, aptly named ‘Carroña,’ depicts a gruesome scene between crows and their ripped apart meal. Pérez uses a blood red chandelier laying on top of broken red shards of glass to create the main focal point. When put together it portrays a scene of carrion being torn apart by crows.

 

_______________
THE KID Too Young To Die, 2013
Vinyl, oil-paint, various materials

 

_______________
Unknown Rattle in the form of a bloated hanging corpse, A.D. 650–850
Late Classic Maya, Ceramic

 

_______________
Jeffrey Silverthorne Morgue, 1972-73
The photographs in Jeffrey Silverthorne’s new book Morgue, were made in 1972 and 1973, at the state morgue of Rhode Island. The 22 large-format photographs of corpses are intimate but discreet. In Silverthorne’s postscript to the book, he notes that when he made these photographs, he was 25 years old, had been married for four years, his second child had just been born and “the Vietnam War was still flowering death. Change and death were in the air, and the morgue was where I could find physical evidence.”

Boy hit by car

Crib Death

Boy found in bushes

 

______________
Meghan Smythe Young Unbecoming, 2019
Interested in capturing “elegant vulgarity,” Meghan Smythe sculpts creamy-hued bodies out of ceramic, plaster, and plasticine, crushing them together into shocking erotic dramas of human life; amid scattered bones are bold erections, suggesting the savage interplay between sex and death. Smythe’s mutilations of the body make visible the messy processes that come with being alive.

 

______________
Anthony Noel Kelly Guilded Man, 1997
Anthony-Noel Kelly is a British artist who made casts of dissected body parts for an exhibition at the London Contemporary Art Fair in 1997. The problem was is that he stole anatomical specimens from the Royal College of Surgeons to fabricate the molds for his morbid sculptures.

Between 1991 and 1994 Kelly persuaded Niel Lindsay, a junior technician at the Royal College of Surgeons, to sneak out the remains from dozens of bodies. In all they stole three heads, three torsos, bits of brain, six arms, and a number of legs and feet.

When he got the body parts back to his studio, Kelly created the molds and produced a series of plaster casts that were painted silver and hung on a wall. When he completed the scupltures, rather than return the body parts, Kelly buried remains on his family’s estate, hid them in the London home of a friend, and in the attic of his own home.

Police began investigating Kelly in 1997 after his exhibit received controversial publicity. During police raids at his London studio, his family’s home, and his friend’s home, police found the body parts that Kelly had hidden. In 1998, he was found guilty and sentenced to nine months in prison. Niel Lyndsay, the lab technician who aided him, received a six-month suspended sentence.

 

______________
Ugo Rondinone If There Were Anywhere But Desert, Friday, 2002
fiberglass, paint, clothing, glitter

 

_______________
Simon Flores Dead Child, 1902
This was painted by Simon Flores on 1902. This is his way of showing people how to love life. This is his reminder of mortality. The image of a dead child shows that life is short and we should live it to the fullest. This is one of the reasons why I fell in love with this painting. Another reason why I like this painting is because of the child’s facial expression. Though she is dead, it looks as if she is smiling, showing that life after death is good. Well, that’s my interpretation of the painting. I’m not really sure of the real interpretation of this painting.

 

_______________
Berlinde De Bruyckere In Flanders Fields, 2000
horse skin, polyester, metal, plastic, blankets

 

_______________
Eugenio Merino Here Died Warhol, 2018
Here Died Warhol is a haunting sculpture of Andy Warhol‘s corpse. Merino encourages gallery-goers to take selfies with the artwork in an attempt to debunk the moneymaking business of celebrity and tourism. Accompanying the sculpture is a fully-operating souvenir shop that allegedly purveys a range of Warhol-related keepsakes.

 

_______________
Sun Yuan & Peng Yu Angel, 2008
The Internet is freaking out over a a fiberglass angel sculpture by artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu—complete with flesh-covered wings, white hair, and frighteningly realistic skin that features details like wrinkles, sunspots, and peach fuzz. Angel, which was originally created in 2008, was previously on view at Saatchi Gallery in London. Last week it was installed in Beijing, and has since sparked a series of Internet rumors. A headline for the website Entertainment Express reads: “SHOCKING! A Fallen Angel With No Feathers Discovered,” while ZonNews published “BREAKING NEWS: Real Life Fallen Angel Has Fallen From The Sky In London.” Other websites have claimed the sculpture was “found” in Texas.

 

_______________
Maurizio Cattelan All, 2008
Maurizio Cattelan’s All is a row of nine marble statues. Each is a figure draped in fabric, but these are strange bodies, Nothing is quite where it should be. It takes time for the oddness to permeate and open up a new question of quite what these figures looked like. Why do heads seem to rise from the place where the chest should be? How did that arm get there, especially if that’s where the shoulder is?

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. So, we’re back. Long story short, my blog got suspended because it had exceeded WordPress’s storage limit. I had no idea that there was a limit until the blog was suddenly shut down without warning. It took a couple of days to find a way to get inside the blog’s storage remotely — as WordPress wouldn’t let me get inside in the normal way — and delete enough material — all from currently dead, potentially to-be-restored posts — to get the blog back online. So, I’m going to need to go through the archives and delete as much unnecessary stuff as I can to give the blog space to keep growing. The only other option would mean migrating the blog to a different platform, but that would mean I’d need to restore each post one by one by hand like I had to do when Google killed the blog’s last incarnation, and there’s no way I’m going to go through that again. And that’s the story. Sorry for the blackout, but everything is back to normal again for now. ** Misanthrope, Hi. My tax guy is supposedly on it, so I’m waiting to hear from him about what needs to be done. Glad your mom made it through the scan. Do you have the results yet? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Wow, that’s a lot of adoring. ** Conrad, Hey, Conrad! Really good to see you, man! I’m happy you liked the music gig and the Liz Craft post. Ha ha, yeah, that ‘Too Cool for School’ article lead to me being not rehired by UCLA because the school’s higher ups were angry that I mentioned the students doing drugs. Oops. That time at UCLA was dreamy. Charles Ray was a phenomenal and innovative teacher, and that’s why so many of his students have gone on to be fascinating and even quite successful artists in many cases. Plus Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy, Morgan Fisher, and other great artists were teaching there at the same time. But it was a rare thing. I’ll try to hear the Grandrieux talk, although my French is probably too shitty to get it. ‘Un lac’ is great! I can’t wait for Le Clef to reopen, but fuck knows when they finally will. Take care, buddy! ** Dominik, Hi! Ha ha, it’s funny you said that the blog was okay when it was about to get very not okay for a couple of days. I swear this blog is cursed or something. I just use social media to announce blog posts and stuff about film screenings or things to do with my books and stuff and share things I really like. It’s extremely rare that I ever even comment on anybody else’s posts. I just don’t want to get pulled into the trolling and stupid fighting and so on. But it works well in that limited way, and I do find out about a lot of really interesting books and art and music and films and so on there. So it’s worth it. Hm, good to know about semen eating, although … mm, I don’t know, ha ha. My week, of course, got totally fucked up by having to de-suspend the blog. That ate up my days pretty much. But now I’m free again, so I’m going to see a friend and work on stuff, and Interview Magazine is doing a big article on my new novel, so I have to do a photo shoot in a few hours. Not looking forward to that. How have your last few days been? I should have said your Godzilla stomping would be as graceful as a ballet dancer’s so you could could pick and choose what tiny things you want to smash. Your sloth sanctuary-based love sounds very appealing at the moment. Love inspiring me to go full on Black Metal style with corpse makeup for my photo shoot, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. How have your days been? ** Shane Christmass, Howdy, Shane. Oh, and thanks a lot for sending that pdf. It looks great! ** Jeff J, Happy hear it, man. I’ve heard a handful of tracks from the Psychic Hotline compilation, and I liked them all, yeah. Yes, the new GbV single is of course already lodged in my head, and the new Iceage is swell, I agree. I hear you about days not for the books. I’m glad you moved some inches on the novel and, naturally, that Stephanie is doing great post-op. ** Steve Erickson, Hi, Well, ha ha, the only nice thing about the suspension was that it stopped the hacking alert emails for a while. In fact, the only reason I knew the blog was back online was that my email box suddenly started getting bombarded again. God knows. I did hear and like Dry Cleaning’s Grimes cover, much more than the original. I’m happy that some of the tunes found favor with you. Ah, … Everyone, Mr. Erickson weighs in on the Lil Nas X video and song right here. ** Okay. It seems somehow appropriate that the blog’s return to form coincides with a post about corpses, or, in most cases, faux-corpses. See you tomorrow.

 

Youth Code

The Black Twig Pickers

Psychic Hotline

Dry Cleaning

Innode

Tyler Holmes

Mainliner

Norf Face

Venus Ex Machina

The Notwist

Melvins

Paul Leary

Institute

Stuck Sunsets

Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt

Aki Onda

 

______________
Youth Code Consuming Guilt ‘They say if you used to be punk, you never were in the first place. Can you really say that about Youth Code, though? The Los Angeles duo make EBM that seemingly betrays their hardcore roots, but a closer listen reveals the thrust of the music is all punk. Sara Taylor and Ryan George, both of whom handle vocals and electronics, move like a hardcore group, even without the conventional instrumentation. It hasn’t always been well-received: they got a mixed reception opening for AFI earlier this year. They are supporting VNV Nation and Skinny Puppy this fall, though—so two of their main influences recognize them.’ — Andy O’Connor

 

_______________
Black Twig Pickers Sheets of Rain, Streams of Sun ‘The Black Twig Pickers are a group defined by their forward thinking approach to a type of music most often associated with times gone by. Over the course of eight full-length records, including collaborative releases with Jack Rose and Charlie Parr, a split LP with Glenn Jones, and numerous EPs and singles, the group has established itself as a collection of dedicated practioners of old time music re-cast and shaped by their appreciation of modern improvisation, drone, and punk. While not at odds with the experimental scene that has fostered them or the old time circles they travel in, The Black Twig Pickers thrive in the in-betweenness of those two worlds, proving that the exploration of the outmost bounds of sound and the exploration of decades old tradition and community aren’t as different as one might think.’ — Thrill Jockey

 

_______________
Psychic Hotline Pulse ‘One artist who definitely incited a party every time they played is New Orleans-based Ruth Mascelli. As well as being a member of the punk group Special Interest, Mascelli also released music under the Psychic Hotline moniker. From 2015 to 2019, Mascelli put out five tapes on underground labels featuring a mixture of synth-punk, banging techno, and bedsit synth-pop. To put a bow on the project Mascelli has released the compilation, The Wild World of Psychic Hotline. This fourteen-track album picks a selection from this short, but impressive output.’ — Nick Roseblade

 

_______________
Dry Cleaning Strong Feelings ‘“Strong Feelings,” a new song from UK art-rock band Dry Cleaning, is a bundle of contradictions, wringing pathos out of detachment, narrative out of non sequiturs. The quartet’s strong clutch of EPs and singles stamped an identity around speak-singing, mundane profundity, and churning post-punk, with dry observations on everything from Meghan Markle to personal wellness. The track’s release coincides with the announcement of their debut album, New Long Leg, and it’s a fitting introduction, more upfront than anything they’ve done to date yet still slippery as ever.’ — Marc Hogan

 

__________
Innode PTMKN ‘The music of Innode has been described as rhythm and noise, with electronic and acoustic elements assembled into precise, quasi-minimalist constructions. With SYN, the band expands on this basic idea in terms of form and sonic palette. There is a clear shift away from programmed drum patterns toward acoustic or electronic drums played live. Synthesizer sounds are still pure, and the arrangement remains controlled, but Innode has broadened their musical investigations to include more expressive passages and micro-melodies. In contrast to previous works, the tracks represent an integration of material coming from three musicians, finally merging into a single unit.’ — son of marketing

 

_______________
Tyler Holmes Nothing ‘Holmes (They/Them) is a singer-songwriter, visual and performance artist who uses music as a therapeutic device. Coming from a turbulent and traumatic ‘cult-like’ early life, they have spent a lifetime crafting their own Black, Queer narrative by pushing the limits of their imagination, Holmes envisions themselves as the imaginary child of Björk and Tricky, using a surrealist lens on a wide variety of genres, often blending diaristic narratives with dark, dream-like whimsy. Autobiographical and absurd, their writing is alluring and uncomfortable.’ — Get In Her Ears

 

________________
Mainliner Dual Myths ‘Mainliner are a noise rock band from Tokyo, Japan. The band was formed in 1995 by guitarist Kawabata Makoto and bassist Asahito Nanjo with the intention of creating a new form of psychedelic music. They released four studio albums before the members went on hiatus to pursue other musical interests. On December 20, 2011 Kawabata Makoto, Koji Shimura and newcomer Kawabe Taigen began recording new material again.’ –collaged

 

 

____________
Norf Face More ‘In recent years, grime has faced scrutiny from new-school rappers such as Aitch, who last May announced, “No one younger than me is bothered about grime,” sparking a debate across social media. Yet many genre pioneers, such as D Double E, are still releasing music to critical acclaim even as the likes of Novelist, KwolleM and Skepta reinvigorate the sound. And now we have the latest big grime and UK-rap-infused project ‘Norf Face’, which sees rappers JME, Capo Lee, Frisco and Shorty – all Tottenham, north London natives – unite as a one-off collective across nine explosive tracks.’ — Nicolas-Tyrell Scott

 

_____________
Venus Ex Machina Grace ‘She’s made an AI opera, been involved in various art projects and composed for film, now Venus Ex Machina has deployed her debut full-length – a sprawling dystopia of decaying industrial beatscapes, squealing noise, drones and disorienting sound design. “Lux” isn’t just a collection of odds and ends, it’s a narrative universe that coaxes full mental attention – described in the press release as “a requiem for an earth beset by environmental change.” ‘Grace’ is a kinetic club cut that has the gritty energy of post-punk and the bioluminescence of science fiction all at once, with rolling percussion and queasy synth drones.’ — Boomkat

 

 

_____________
The Notwist Al Sur ‘Nearly two decades have passed since the release of the Notwist’s Neon Golden. An ingenious synthesis of indie rock and electronica, the album was a shining example of “plinkerpop,” Morr Music founder Thomas Morr’s term for a wave of delicate, humanistic electronic pop music that emerged around the turn of the millennium. Vertigo Days, their first in seven years, uses a long period of absence and a rupture in the lineup as a route to reinvigoration. New to the fold is Cico Beck, who replaces Martin “Console” Gretschmann, the master programmer who aided the Notwist’s evolution from indie rockers to electronica mavens. On Vertigo Days, this introspective, somewhat hermetic band looks outwards and engages with new languages, perspectives, and voices.’ — Louis Pattison

 

 

_______________
Melvins The Great Good Place ‘For better or worse, the Melvins will forever be associated with a prevailing pop-culture narrative that’s been reinforced so much over the last 30 years it’s become a minor form of heresy to question it. The history of the Melvins, of course, intertwines with the ascension of Seattle, grunge and, in particular, Nirvana in ways that position the band as a catalyst for all three. While it’s fortunate that the Melvins have always been universally acknowledged for their contribution—their plodding, Black Sabbath-inspired style essentially birthed Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains—the reductionist version of the story we’ve been recanting all these years doesn’t serve the band’s accomplishments.’ — Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

 

 

______________
Paul Leary What Are You Gonna Do? ‘Paul Leary of Butthole Surfers is back with a new music video for “What Are You Gonna Do,” a track from hisstudio album Born Stupid. “What Are You Gonna Do,” is an amalgamation of trippy psychedelic clips that merge into the unholy as Leary’s face randomly appears and disintegrates into the abyss. This psychedelic hellscape is greeted by the song’s unique blend of punk and indie rock, with pop like tempos and progressions, contrasted heavily with Leary’s deep, satanic-like vocals. Toward the end of the song it sounds like it might end with an ethereal guitar line, but it soon gets swallowed by brooding ambiance.’ — mxdwn

 

 

______________
Institute 01. Salt, 02. Dead Sea, 03. Giddy Boys, 04. Bureaucrat, 05. Familiar Stranger, 06. Success, 07. Weak Times, 08. Immorality, 09. Narrow & Straight ‘From their start around a half decade ago, Institute has been band of agitators, crafting tensile and anxious songs—playing grayscale post-punk with a Stoogian swagger. But they used to operate on a smaller, more personal level. Their songs dealt with Brown’s immediate concerns and poetic existential musings. But given the way the world’s turned, he says, he was forced to think bigger. “It felt inevitable, as a band actively recording music right now,” he says. “What are you doing if you’re not addressing this absurd world?”’ — Colin Joyce

 

 

______________
Stuck Sunsets Climb! ‘Delitism is described by Patrick Atkinson as being a record that evolved out of the loss of his brother with “its title a macabre joke about competitive brotherly love and death being the ultimate trump card.” ‘Climb!’ was the very first song that Patrick Atkinson wrote for the album. He explains that its story is “told cinéma vérité style from my viewpoint as a child who would sit at the top of the stairs wishing I was an adult.” Atkinson adds that the “song transitions through to the tragedy that would make me long to be young again.”’ — Simon Godley

 

 

______________
Bill Orcutt & Chris Corsano Distance of Sleep ‘Sadly, many will hear Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt’s latest LP, Made Out of Sound, as “not-jazz,” though it would be more aptly described as “not-not-jazz.” In a better world, it would warrant above-the-fold reviews in Downbeat, or an appearance on David Sanborn’s late-night show (if someone would only give it back to him). More likely, we can hope for a haiku review on Byron Coley’s Twitter timeline to sufficiently connect the various improvised terrains trodden by this long-time duo — but if you’ve been able to listen past the overmodulated icepick fidelity of Harry Pussy, it should surprise you not an iota that Orcutt’s style is rooted as much in the fractal melodies of Trane and Taylor as it is in Delta syrup or Tin Pan Alley glitz.’ — PALILALIA

 

 

______________
Aki Onda Silence Prevails: East Village Community Gardens During the Pandemic ‘Aki Onda is an artist, composer, and curator. He creates compositions, performances, and visual artworks from those sound memories, and he is particularly known for his “Cassette Memories” —works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by using the cassette Walkman over a span of last three decades.’ — Pioneer Works

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. Sorry this post is so late in arriving. My blog had big, mysterious technical issues, but they seem to have been resolved now. ** Misanthrope, Us too. No thunderstorms so far though. Ah, yeah, taxes. I should talk to my tax guy, I guess. ** David Ehrenstein, Glad you dug her work. See, that Pasolini sequence you linked me to doesn’t do a thing for me. Its greatness escapes me. He and I are just not bedfellows, I guess. ** Dominik, Hi, Dom! I’m happy you like Liz’s sculptures. She’s awesome. It’s true, social media brings out this need in a lot of people to have constant attention and this idea that whatever they’re doing or feeling or eating for dinner is something that everyone they ‘know’ should know about. They don’t seem to even question whether everyone wants to know about it. Like their friends are their therapists. It’s very strange. And then the influencers thing in a lot of cases is that to the max. I’ve always thought that I had to do something to earn others’ attention, and that the attention should be focused on the thing I did or made, not on me and my ego or whatever, and I always believed that how that attention manifested is ultimately a private thing that I’ll never know about or understand. But maybe it’s an introvert vs. extrovert kind of deal. Social media is an extrovert’s world. Or something. I haven’t seen any friends who don’t live in Paris in the flesh in forever. Thank fuck for Zoom and Skype, but it’s not easy even so. I’m happy that you guys managed a lengthy, fun virtual visit at least. Ha ha, about the advantages of eating semen? That’s quite an assignment. Yes. this week should end up being pretty busy, maybe starting today, I’m not sure. Rehearsals and Zoom meetings and even an in-person meeting maybe. The hacking is still going on, believe it or not, still all the time, day and night. I’ve kind of mostly managed to forget about it except for the avalanche of WordPress emails reminding me its continually happening. Although the blog has been behaving a little wonky and difficult starting last night, and I hope that’s not an effect of the hacking. As soon as life restarts, I’ll hunt for a Yaoi convention. It could be. Like I said, some substantial portion of Parisians seem to be extremely into anime, manga, and all that stuff. It is interesting how, in devising these ‘loves’, one (or I, at least) do seem to learn previously unknown things about myself, ha ha. Love making everything in the world tiny for a few hours so you can stomp around destroying whatever you want like Godzilla, G. ** Steve Erickson, Yes, the blog is acting weird right now, on the inside too. I’m not sure what it is or means. Unfortunately, I think that Lil Nas X is what passes for adventurous these days. It’s a conservative era. Everyone, Mr. Steve Erickson has a new song for y’all “inspired by Brian Reitzell’s score for HANNIBAL, especially his practice of using processed samples of non-musical objects. I sampled myself shaking household objects and put them through distortion, phasing, reverb, etc.” and it’s called ‘Digestivo’. ** Brian, Terrific Tuesday, Brian! Super glad you like Liz’s work. I can totally get that maybe the way to see and appreciate Pasolini’s work is as a whole, an oeuvre. There are a lot of great artists whose work works that way, I think. I really think I’m going to have a dawning moment when I finally get on the Pasolini train. I think if I still did psychedelics, that way of seeing would probably work. Oh, really, about ‘Kindertotenlieder’? That’s cool. Like I said, it’s my fave of our pieces. I don’t know if it’s objectively best, although it could be, but it just especially gets to me. It’s one of the two pieces of ours that has played in New York. ‘Jerk’ is the other one. ‘Crowd’ will play there in October unless the Covid stuff ends up delaying that again. Transfer application … you mean that you might change schools, or … ? Have you not read ‘Story of the Eye’ before? You’re in for a big treat, if not. I’ll check out what ‘Omori’ is. I still haven’t gotten my Switch. It’s maddening. Maybe I’ll do something this week whose success seems to warrant the reward of a Switch. Have a swell one! ** Right. Up there is a gig of music I’ve been listening to and liking enough to recommend. There are quite a number of actual songs in there, which is kind of unusual for my gig posts, and maybe that will friendly it up? In any case, I, of course, request your ears and eyes too in most cases. See you tomorrow.