When I made this edit I was really just doing what I’d been doing for the year prior; teaching myself the fundamentals of chopping and looping things in a DAW so as to gain some insight into music production. I didn’t know anything about electronic music until around September ‘11, when I had this unremitting urge to put together a mixtape following the sudden realization that I could somehow mash some songs together to resemble something that could be played in a club environment. This urge completely overwhelmed me. I stopped going into work at my computer programming job. I reenacted that scene in Seinfeld where George quits his job and shows up again the next day. My coworkers could tell I was losing it.
I was absolutely captivated by this thing, this idea of bringing something musical and dance-oriented to fruition by sheer force of will. I stayed up all night several nights in a row surviving on a startlingly small amount of food—mostly junk food—smoking an insane amount of marijuana while absolutely fixating on and obsessing over how to make something that someone might actually care about.
I’m not exactly sure why Sakanaction became a thing that I ended up going back to numerous times. There was something about “Because of Listening to Bach Melodies at Night” that gave me this immense, indescribable feeling of, “This is it. This is what I want to be doing. I want to make something like this.” Well, not that exactly, but something of that caliber. I bootlegged and chopped up “Native Dancer”.
It wasn’t until after this obsession drove me into the ground and I began clawing my way back to reality that I decided to remix things again with less fixation and more clearness of mind. I didn’t really think anything of this edit whatsoever after it was done. I thought it was just sort of an extended version of the original. I don’t understand most of the Japanese language but it still resonates with me in a very emotional way. Anyway, people seem to like it.
“… does Minnesota really have that little going on that this is the biggest headline they have? The answer is yes…”
Despite being riddled with contradictions and false dichotomies, in this article Kitty makes a few solid points as she struggles to grapple with horrifying situations while on a tour drawing the worst fans in the world. Although she’d have you believe it’s a firm grip—which it is, undoubtedly, after the fact that she’s got whatever it is she’s grappling for in her hands—I simply cannot blame her for being emotional and at times reactionary as she attempts to make odds and ends with an onslaught of sexism, harassment and, in some cases, outright assault.
http://noisey.vice.com/blog/my-thoughts-on-this-whole-danny-brown-oral-sex-thing
I have sympathy for this argument, because the exchange she’s talking about really does get lost when we talk about the economics of art; we focus on material questions of who should pay for what, and often act as though the attention and approval artists get from us is a bigger gift than the world full of art we get from them. However: Palmer’s logic here is itself generally identical to cold, hard free-market capitalism. Yes, the exchange she’s describing is ‘fair’ — everyone involved is willing and happy to engage in it. It’s also ‘fair’ to pay someone minimum wage for work that makes you millions, and fair for a male musician to spend every night having sex with starstruck, consenting young fans, but fairness is not the same thing as nobility, and neither of those arrangements is something you’d present as a revolutionary new relationship.”
http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/the-amanda-palmer-problem.html (via deadgirlfriends)
All controversy aside, Palmer’s TED Talk raises some interesting points and is definitely worth your 14 minutes.
Ryuichi Sakamoto by Andy Warhol, 1984
As I try to recall a fleeting thought I had about it earlier, I suppose I’ll weigh in on the whole Kitty Pryde thing. I didn’t pay attention to her until D.A.I.S.Y. Rage, not because of any controversy or anything but because I didn’t really connect with any of her music prior to that. I still think she’s a very capable person, and, maybe not so much on the side of evil for making ignorant remarks but rather just on the side of the ignorant.
Evil is a word we as human beings need in our vocabulary. Not because of anything absolute, or because morals are anything but an invention of and artifact for ourselves, but because it so accurately conveys what practically nothing else can. That is to say, I don’t believe in an absolutist world view that encompasses ideas like “true evil” or “true good”, but if we were to abolish certain words just because they connote such ideas our language would be severely emaciated. It is this ongoing struggle against euphemism which we must all partake if we want words to keep their teeth and not regress into the dark, boring well of meaninglessness.
It’s important to make clear the distinction between evil and its accomplices, and those who simply do not know any better. It’s the difference between the benign and the malignant. I can very much understand taking heartfelt offense to ignorant remarks, as anyone with a soul or moral compass can, but I think it is important to practice temperance, especially in the case of those who demonstrate a healthy propensity for change.
Like many people who are close to me and have also made strikingly similar remarks, she is herself a victim. To expect her to be able to cope with—and I won’t say “abuse” because that would be a fucking insult—rape, and torture, and murder of the soul with as much ease as would be expected from someone of her caliber is probably unrealistic. She is, after all, just like you and I and everyone else in this mess which we can only hope to perpetually clean up, in which we’re never more than a breath away from the end.
