Sinister: These things I say might seem to offend, but not half as much as I'd like to intend...
Hello sinister, I have been sitting here for almost 10 minutes attempting to write a reasonable introduction to this shambles and failing with excellence. I'm not sure that this direct admission of failure works any better than the failures themselves, but at least it contains two things worth noting 1) this post will be shambolic, and 2) I am an excellent failure. I don't think there was anything particularly wondrous that was burning a hole in my outbox, but I guess I just wanted to chip away at the coating of lurkerdom that has enveloped me. Even though I know that one of the rules clearly states that you shouldn't email something unless you yourself would like to receive it (it's got a commandment vibe to it doesn't it?), I can't help but feel that this post is going to be dispatched whether I like it or not. It's awfully therapeutic, no? I guess I could comment on stuff and things, that's always a good place to start. Right'o. Lambchop at Albert Hall a fortnight ago was something fantabulous. I would even go as far as to say that it was the best gig/concert/thing that I have ever seen (in my entire life, etc). I'm sure there a plenty of people who would disagree, but at the end of the day, I have never been that euphoric during and after a gig. They played as a 13 piece band, and managed to pull off faultless segues from subdued moments of serenity to stupendous sections of what can only be called "whigging out". I guess I'm inherently biased because I love Kurt Wagner's songwriting, but he really did show his brilliance that evening as a band leader and performer in his own right. I think all of the songs I would possibly have requested or hoped for were played, and the one that has always made me go all giddy and glaze over "Up With People" was spectacular. I suppose, what I was trying to say from the beginning was that this was my perfect gig (using a similar definition for "perfect" that David did in referring to albums a fortnight ago) in that I went giddy with excitement as soon as they started playing and remained on that level until well after they had finished and packed up. Infact I think I only glanced at my watch once, and that was late in the set when I began praying that they would say bollocks to the curfew and keep playing for another 10 hours. I honestly could've listened until dawn. I'm not competent enough to write a proper review of it, so my calamitous expression of glee will have to suffice. I'm sure I had something else to say before I started that ramble about the gig, but it got lost somewhere in the enthusiasm. Perhaps I can sum up everything in a paragraph. Belated hugs, hello's and how-are-you's to all the people from the Greenwich picnic, Cat Power gig, various footballing outings, Primrose Hill picnic, escapades at the Bappsy Trotwood, various outings in Camden and the like, and even as far back as ATP. To all the lovely Londoners that have been so very welcoming and friendly over the last couple of months I thank you especially. Finally, I just want to say hello and give a large hug to Stefano, with whom a growing number of splendarous days & nights are being had. Oh yeah, there's always one tacked on the end isn't there...to Mr B Apps: I'm missing you already!! Okiedoke, that's about enough from me at the moment. Though there is one more thing. Has anyone else noticed that posting to sinister is much like horse riding. Once you've fallen into lurkerdom, the longer you wait to get back into action, the harder it is to do so. I guess I just stated the obvious, but...oh well. I'll see some of you this weekend in Brighton, others of you elsewhere in the near future, some of you I'll perhaps unknowingly pass in the street and a large number of you I shall perhaps never meet at all. Until then. Love Jeremy ps. one of these days I'll learn to write something that is both tangible and readable. But baby until then... -------------------------------- http://www.breams.co.uk Home of all things breamsy +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
wednesday night i stayed out late with the mega-nerds just to see the opening of star wars. i had to wait in line and everything. the air smelled friendly, like twizzlers and just-spilled soda. i saw my high school history teacher. we exchanged hugs and chatted about our latest trips to europe. there were a bunch of people in obi-wan kenobi costumes fighting each other with plastic lightsabers. when i got home, i wrote a poem about the broken pieces of candy i saw on the ground outside the movie theater. i wrote about some kids who went to my high school. i wrote about graphing calculators and busses. i wrote about my first kiss. "you are the first generation raised without religion" thursday night came and i sat quietly in a room full of tarot cards and candles. i didn't feel comfortable at all there. i think i'm scared of the future. Maureen Seaton tried to read me my cards and i almost started crying. she's really a lovely person though -- she wrote a book of poems called "Furious Cooking," read it if you ever get the chance -- and afterward i went bowling with David Trinidad, which was particularly glamorous. he's not a bad bowler. i, on the other hand, am terrible. i drank some beer and then i got into a fistfight with a communist in the parking lot behind the diversey rock'n'bowl. i have scrapes on my elbows and my back has cuts from the broken glass. my pants were ripped and ruined. i drove home in my mom's minivan. "From St. Kilda to King's Cross it's thirteen hours on a bus." friday i went downtown, to bookbinding studio. i finished up a roundback case binding i'd been working on, and then i got a ride up to "dave" the drug dealer's house. "dave" is ambitious for a loser -- he makes a great deal of money by doing almost nothing. my friend picked up half a pound of marijuana, and we drove back to the suburbs. i did some laundry and went to bed early. "a poet who was born doing reference work in sin, and born confessing that in the end she is a drunken rat." saturday i went to work at the shoe store. i got some bagels and a scone i never ate. after work i went to krispy kreme and attempted to buy a sweatshirt that said "ORIGINAL GLAZED," but they were out of my size. i was forced, against my will, to bring three dozen donuts up to "dave's" place. i watched a bit of pulp fiction on his bigscreen tv, which was terrifically boring. one should never visit "dave" more than once in the same month, unless one enjoys being bored to tears. "dave" and his friends asked me to go to a private loft party, where "dave" was spinning. instead i went to a dirty little bar near my house, where i dropped my very first drink and shattered the glass. the bartender is a friend of mine, and he humiliated me by putting my drinks into styrofoam cups for the rest of the night. i may never go there again. "The coldest I've ever been was in Cleveland, Ohio. My host and hostess hated and loved each other by frantic turns. To escape I'd go on long walks in the yellowing snow as the evening winds raged." sunday was the shoe store again. i won a free pair of shoes and got to take them home. they're hideously ugly; i intend to exchange them at nordstrom's, maybe for some jeans or else some new pyjamas. mine have a hole in them. i ate some mexican food with my friend, and it made me ill. after that, i went home and started making all kinds of books. i even made a book out of the pants i'd ruined in my scrap with the communist. my brother came home from indiana and called me a bunch of names. i tried to make him some macaroni and cheese, but he wouldn't have any. i ate some pudding. "bring on your fireworks, which are a mixed splendor of piston and of pistil; very well provided an instant may be fixed so that it will not rub, like any other pastel." i'm beginning to feel like i am a new person every ten minutes. when i talk to David in the bowling alley about William Carlos Williams, i do not even feel related to the person who sat on "dave's" leather couch and made small talk about the simpsons with some british coke addict in for the week. and the boy who swooned so hard he almost fell over after kissing Megan Lobsinger in the rain, years and years ago -- surely he isn't the same person who just a few hours back was helping some fat woman squeeze into a pair of shoes two sizes too small. "And there he learned to play the flute -- not very well --" i feel like that cheap leather shoe sometimes. "here," says mark, "do this drug." shaun says "hey, let's go rent a movie." nick throws a punch. "come on," says sarah, "let me come with you." "you should cut your hair;" matt says, "you look stupid the way you are." & yes. yes, now that you mention it i do sorta feel stupid this way. maybe you're right. "Ah, Sharon Lipschutz," said the young man. "How that name comes up. Mixing memory and desire." (after your first time on ecstasy, each pill you swallow becomes an attempt to relive that first high -- the best one. the one that made you happy, for the first time. the one that seemed to change your life. "with our designer drugs and leather gloves and work boots, with the world on our shoulders, with that police car, with that bright guitar, on a shooting star you make a wish -- she said, 'seratonin, be my friend.' " but you never feel that way again.) baker,baker __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
dear sinister, i have begun, in my time on earth, to put together a list of Rules -- simple, self-evident truths that have presented themselves to me with enough regularity and consistency as to seem irreversible, irrefutable, and entirely solid. i would like to talk to you a little bit tonight about Rule Number One. * i'm in this class, 'subversive verse,' which covers the work of a few female poets of the last century. my most recent assignment was to read Diane DiPrima's Loba. this excited me -- i remember reading DiPrima's work from New York in the late 50's; there was this poem called "Backyard," which is by far one of the most beautiful i've ever read. Loba, however, is a collosal work of shit. i used to feel unqualified to read this sort of thing -- this she-goddess, wolf-woman crap always perplexed me. i didn't get it, i thought it must be beyond me. that was years ago. i like to think i'm a bit more well-read these days, but Loba still sets my teeth on edge. i don't understand how anyone finds this sort of work at all appealing, much less EMPOWERING and LIBERATING, as the blurbs on the back of it proclaim with such vigor. if i were a woman i would be angry at this book. i would be angry at the people writing so many flowery praises about the whole concept -- this wolf-goddess being portrayed as some mythical source of female strength... it's insultingly stupid. like a catholic priest hanging around a clinic for rape victims, trying to tell these terribly wounded women that jesus will heal them -- i think i would go so far as to claim that DiPrima's immense success with Loba is a form of exploitation. she seems to be taking advantage of that desperate need for hope, any hope, that a woman feels after she is ravaged, as so many are, by our culture. * i should admit right now that i'm not interested in feminism anymore. i used to be very very adamant and forthright and ambitious when it came to my beliefs concerning feminism; nowadays, it just tires and frustrates me. this is not entirely DiPrima's doing -- it's just i've heard far too many arguments & endless debates over the merits of feminism vs. female-ism, eroticism vs. sexual empowerment, roles of subversion, effects of gender roles, stereotyping, sexist parenting, and the like. feminism today has turned from a steady march of women's progress into a huge and unholy mess, and frankly, i don't think much is being accomplished by it anymore. i guess i'd like to think that we could all just reach some agreement to move on, reach post-feminism and be done with it. i'd like to think that (while we acknowledge that women have been and continue to be oppressed) we have reached the point at which distinguishing between gender-based oppression and oppression in its other forms is simply doing more harm than good. i'd like to think gender politics is just another method of general politics -- another perfectly curable social ill that's currently being perpetuated by a distinct group of evil men. but deep down, i'm very, very scared. i'm scared that a penis is inherently a weapon. i'm scared that sex isn't anything more than a power struggle. i'm scared that there's a biological divide between the oppressed and the oppressors -- a chromosome that makes men into automatic monsters. * there's this girl, see. a girl i've dated on and off for the last five years or so -- a girl who breaks my heart over and over, and whom i love terribly, despite everything. she's a beautiful, fragile, and careful person, and it's due to the damages she's suffered at the hands of other men that her relationships never work out. we're not dating now. we've never really been able to maintain our relationship for more than a few months at a time: things always end up falling apart, it seems, despite our best intentions. this is mainly because this girl was hurt when she was young. she was raped by her boyfriend -- a boy who used to live down the street from me, in fact, though i never knew him. a boy, eerily enough, who was in the music business. some of you may have some experience with this sort of thing. i never did. despite everything she told me about what had happened to her, i was very unprepared for the repurcussions of this girl's rape. i didn't know then what i know now -- that these traumas have their ways of echoing again and again in the heart. and so, when we we were kissing one night, and touching each other, and feeling -- god -- wonderful... i did not expect this inevitable, rising fear. now, i have never raped anyone. i have never hit a girl, and i have never kissed or had sex with anyone i did not love in some capacity. i don't enjoy making other people feel uncomfortable. i don't like to hurt people or even animals. i am admittedly very defensive and will sometimes behave in a mean way if i feel i am being threatened or manipulated, but even at those times i feel terribly guilty if i actually end up hurting anyone. so it was with terrible surprise that i was first made aware that this girl had become terrified of me. she backed away. she curled up. she cried. it was not my fault, and it was not hers, but when this girl began to get scared of me -- well, i have never felt so helpless and horrible in my life. there is nothing i can say to describe that feeling: it was as though i had destroyed the person i loved, simply by loving her. and of course, i didn't want to be identified with ... him. i didn't want her heart to confuse me with that monster, that son of a bitch, that stain of a human being. i felt as though i'd done something terrible to her, that my body contained something poisonous and evil -- my fingers that had itched to touch her collarbone, my tongue that wanted to taste her earlobes, my hips that liked the way hers would bump against them -- all of these things were as much mine as they were his. if she could see no evidence in my eyes that my love for her was different from his, then perhaps it wasn't any different. maybe she's right to see him inside of me. i back away. i curl up. i cry. this is how i learn Rule Number One. the First Rule is simple: sex destroys everything. * "Sometimes," says Douglas Coupland, "people get broken in ways they can't ever be fixed." if there ever was a way for a boy and a girl to love each other, without oppression or fear or sadness, i'm afraid that this girl has been broken. i'm afraid that i have been broken. i'm scared for all of us, but my footnote is one of hope -- i hope that our kittens and our children, our poems, our factories,and our brand new shoes are all bright and shiny and perfect enough to make us happy. i hope we can replace one kind of love with another. i hope we can find some other way to make ourselves whole, and safe, and pure. love, baker,baker __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
participants (2)
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baker,baker -
breams