A final old posting from My Space. This time a biography of sorts:
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Born and raised in Athens, Georgia, though no-one ever thought to ask me about it, I went to Catholic school (no, I'm not Catholic) - St. Joseph's, right near downtown - from kindergarten through eighth grade, and Clarke Central High School afterwards. Except for a few brief moments here and there, and a few individuals here but not there, I did not enjoy high school, and escaped to downtown, starting in 1996 to go to Rock shows at the 40 Watt and Atomic, and meeting many lovely individuals in those distant days before the booming economy and "indie" hipster dorks started flooding the town with new building materials and clever ideas about how to make money. I also spent too much time talking to strangers on the Internet; and reminiscing about childhood friends who I had known outside school, who'd gone; and witnessing my family's home in a part of town between the suburbs and the city, near a large chunk of unused land - a stretch of the Middle Oconee River passing through - gradually deteriorate, by which I mean, "change"; because when your childhood home changes when you're not there to experience the changes or have a say in them, obviously it's a bad thing. My family had traveled a lot - to Alaska, France, all over Washington state, the southwest.... and watched Dr. Who Saturday nights on P B S... and went to Atlanta to buy bagels at a great Jewish bakery when the only ones you could get in Athens were frozen, at the supermarket... and I remember the day I bought my first Smiths record - no: not the day, the moment first listening to it, on the car stereo driving down Washington St.
I attended Emory University, '97-'01. What was fun and intriguing about being in Atlanta occurred far from the Emory campus (naturally... since the uni. is separated from the city by Druid Hills and its golf course!), including parties at the Candler-Smith lofts; working at W R E K, 91.1 FM, the Georgia Tech radio station that plays more avant-garde/ experimental/ yadda-yadda music than any other station save perhaps W N U R in Chicago or W F M U in New York; eating Mexican and all sorts of Asian cuisines on the Buford Highway (which is actually quite close to Emory, being in the other direction); going to Free Jazz and other poorly-attended gigs at the original Eyedrum, the Existentialist "church," and elsewhere; and engaging in various late-'90's-style ironic behavior with similar-minded friends, such as eating at Cici's Pizza.
I lived in Madison, Wisconsin, '01-'04; and, relatively free from the cultural currents I'd been a part of in Athens and Atlanta, I achieved a remarkable sense of mental clarity... fleetingly. Put more concretely, I got a Master's degree in history; since we're talking here about a doctoral program, in other words, I quit. Though I'm still interested in what I studied: namely, progressive and radical dissenters of the first half of the twentieth century (U S A) especially with regard to foreign-policy debates - e.g., the neutrality movement of the '30's, anti-imperialists, Socialists.
I like many, many things, but usually only when they are taken out of their context - or, rather, after they've been enjoyed by many, and are abandoned to be taken up by the likes of me, to be contextualized, and thus made to be specters of a different time - for example, Roseannne re-runs or Sam Fuller movies or Frank Sinatra or "science" fiction.
I returned to Athens, summer of '04, much to the bemusement of many; yet having already come back regularly for winter and summer breaks from school, Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, and other music performances, and so on.
I like to listen to music - I'm academic [obsessive-compulsive] about it, so it's rarely fun or inspirational anymore.
I've driven the same car since 1995. In the summer of 2003, driving through the Illinois corn fields, listening to Swans's Soundtracks for the Blind, the setting sun seemed like it was actually rising from beyond the horizon of the flat land that laid out before me. This scene led to a song, which has been rejected but was one of several that lead to...
Making my own music, though the process of recording is still too disparate from the random pleasure or catharsis I get from singing to myself. I've completed a C D R record, Winter's, released in November, 2006, under the moniker, The People Under the Sun. The track listing:
"The State of Things (Self-Portrait)"
"Hell and Earth"
"Hone the Earth"
"I, I... (Prelude)"
"Sing Song (Part 1)"
"I, I..." / "Sing Song (Part 2)"
"Love and Social Death"
"Love and Social Death (Coda)"
The record consists entirely of vocals.
I read books and write essays; for the sake of publishing the latter, and more, I've started an e-zine, Sweet Pea Review - no, rather, it's an imitation of an e-zine, really an anthology-in-progress, as it is not updated often or with any regularity, and the contributions will stay there as long as it exists; it is a collection of writings/ photos/ etc. of whomever is willing to contribute. With regard to its primary subject, music, Sweet Pea offers discussions directly related to the music itself, not the gossip and faux-ideological disputes that envelope it, with the aim of tying musical criticism into the themes developed by essayists, literary and visual-art critics, philosophers, and historians - say, George Steiner, Hannah Arendt, Georges Bataille, Terry Eagleton, Alain Badiou, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Susan Sontag, Gore Vidal, Isaiah Berlin.
In these past few years, nearly always working on an essay or some other project for Sweet Pea, my listening has gone beyond any (mis)conception of the notion of eclecticism - that is, the point is moot. I actually do prefer those artists who cover a lot of ground, so to speak, whose work not only suggests several different methods and styles melding together but also compel thought about extra-musical concerns. Artists with massive bodies of work - not revolving around a center, temporal or conceptual, appeal to me: Anthony Braxton, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Harry Partch, Pierre Henry, Olivier Messiaen, Sun City Girls, John Zorn, Neil Young, etc.
I've recorded enough material to make up a second People Under the Sun record. I don't know when I'll have the inspiration to do the necessary editing, over-dubbing, and manipulating required to finish it.