The phone hacking scandal of 2011 inspired MURDOCHTOPUS, but its 2012 birth coincided with revelations of News Corp. involvement in computer hacking, an FBI bribery investigation, the resulting depredations-defense legal fund nearing $1B USD…and Murdoch’s endorsement of Rick Santorum. Further, Murdoch recently tweeted his support for Scottish independence, possibly owing to the Murdochtopus’s striking resemblance to a bagpipes.
Fortunately the Murdochtopus is made of dyed, anodized aluminum, and therefore colorfast, weatherproof and a poor conductor of heat and electricity. As such it will doubtless survive its electrified kingdom crashing around it with such force that the rubble stops only at a sewer splashdown. Yet The Sunnever sets on this empire, for its body is made from a streetlight reflector, disabled and torn as a refutation of the maxim: “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
The lost foam-cast tentacles preserve the undulatory movements of the octopus, and the lost wax-cast face is that of the legendary mug at its most cheery and unflappable. As empires go, it’s a decent housepet—but you’ll never train it on newspaper.
Sometimes the simplest things are the most striking. The perfect symmetry possible with modern machining has strewn our landscape with mathematically precise geometries, unseen to the casual users of products that contain them. Even when these shapes fail they are buried in their own graveyards without ceremony.
This steel bracelet was cut from gearteeth, heated in a forge and bent into shape, then milled out on the inside to be smooth. It was then varnished on the interior with Earth Safe Finishes’ Marine Varnish gloss, a non-toxic, water-based, low-VOC (volatile organic compound) sealant that will protect the wearer from the bare metal, which would otherwise rust.
Last week’s New York Giants Superbowl game ended in a victory prompting plenty of local news puffery. But the real giants are among us in this city, in their towering vertical Jotunheim: corporate clients like those served by the car service I take on late nights. This driver’s vignette made me wonder who’s got it better:
He was asked on Sunday to take a “timed job,” in which the driver takes a client somewhere and waits for him to return to the car, getting paid the while—about $100 an hour. He was to take someone to a bar to watch the Giants game and then home after an estimated 4-5 hours.
But the driver turned down $500 because he wanted to watch the game with his extended family, and apparently one of his relatives wouldn’t let him live it down if he missed it. (As a side note, this relative was both his cousin and brother-in-law.)
“♫♪ Nice work if you don’t need it, and you can get it in N.Y.! ♫♫♪♫”
And you wait, keep waiting for that one thing
which would infinitely enrich your life:
the powerful, uniquely uncommon,
the awakening of dormant stones,
depths that would reveal you to yourself.
In the dusk you notice the book shelves
with their volumes in gold and in brown;
and you think of far lands you journeyed,
of pictures and of shimmering gowns
worn by women you conquered and lost.
And it comes to you all of a sudden:
That was it! And you arise, for you are
aware of a year in your distant past
with its fears and events and prayers.
Accompanying illustrations: Revolutionary images in pointillized sepia imprecision.
My interest in Luxembourgish band Rome providentially coincided with my participation in early Occupy Wall Street. I was looking for cultural products that bore witness to, examined and problematized past revolutions. Rome’s latest release, “Die Aesthetik Der Herrschaftsfreiheit” (The Aesthetic of Anarchy), is a 3-album epic that opens with the statement: “Art Holds a Unity that History Does Not.” On the facing page is a pointillized image I suspect is from Spanish Civil War-era Barcelona. Like the image at left, the rendering hearkens to both newspaper-printing and the yellowing of time, while making indistinct the revolutionary image portrayed.
Though founder Jerome Reuter is from Luxembourg, Rome has been based out of Germany for some time. This changed recently, and I wonder if it had anything to do with Germany’s understandable sensitivity towards any talk straying beyond reformism. The music is very European: lyrics are in English but extensive samples and commentary are in German and French with the occasional Italian and Spanish. Reuter says English is “neutral.” As far as I can find, Rome is the only band in the European underground “neofolk” movement that is not crypto-/fascist in its iconography and lyrics, although it doesn’t shy away from confronting the ideological past and its legacies. (UPDATE: England’s Sieben is also clearly opposed to right wing use of “Blood and Soil” aesthetics, which I write about at this post.)
I recently ordered the European edition of 2011’s Die Aesthetik Der Herrschaftsfreiheit (3 CDs in three beautifully-bound booklets) to better understand and translate the lyrics; entire passages of this album are in German and my German is not strong enough to translate by ear. In the booklets, Rome credits its inspirations to “Bertolt Brecht, Peter Weiss, Pablo Neruda, Abel Paz, H-M Enzensberger, Georg Büchner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Reinaldo Arenas, Bertrand Russell, P-J Proudhon, Gustav Landauer, u.a. [und andere, and others]”.
The ballad “To Each His Storm” is a suitable introduction to this album. Though it uses the singer/songwriter format that Rome has increasingly used over its career, Die Aesthetik includes many fine examples of all styles and voices used by Rome across its prolific release calendar since 2006. Look for further translations and perhaps critiques as I proceed.
This is close, far too close
You just might
Be blinded by this crown’s golden light
You just might
Be putting yourself in the flame
Which can only burn and shame
Our lawless life
Just seems so compelling
Because you too
Could ennoble yourself through rebelling
But what good are they
Ideals soaked in blood
What good are they
Buried in the mud
To each his ground on which to flourish
To each his storm in which to perish
Now that we’ve shed our clothes and shared our oaths
There’s no way back for you
Don’t kid yourself
We’d rather be mad than delighted
You’d rather be entertained than enlightened
There’s no way back to you
(ref)
This is too close… (cont)
Die Keller versiegelt
Die Bücher eingestampft
Die Bibliotheken verriefelt
Die Schriften verbrannt
Die Zeitungen geschwärzt
Die Portraits gewechselt
Die Vorstellungen gestört
Die Theater geschlossen
Die Filme zerstört
Die Spiegel erblindet
(trans.:)
The cellar is sealed
The books are shredded
The libraries are locked
The newspapers are redacted
The portraits are swapped out
The beliefs are deranged
The theaters are closed
The films are destroyed
The mirrors go blind
UPDATE:
I thought I’d not cause offense in uploading “To Each…”, since many other Trisol releases of Rome are on Youtube with thousands of views and comments. It was a considered decision.
But within 12 hours of posting a link to the video I made of this image & song, copyright owner Trisol Music Group GmbH had it removed. Fair enough. I’m sure they’ve put some money into developing Rome as a talent and {shudder} brand and it’s their right to manage their “content.” If you’re interested in Rome after this post and the 30-second clip I linked to on Amazon, much of Rome’s work released on the redoubtable Swedish independent, Cold Meat Industry, can be heard in its entirety on Youtube. (See Querkraft, a more industrial early release, with this chilling fan video.) It’s easy enough to buy the individual tracks from eMusic and Amazon/Google Play (or, if you must, iTunes), and for “Die Aesthetik” be aware that the U.S. edition is almost as costly as the EU hardcopy, for what appears to be very little: 3 individual CDs, priced around $31 apiece.
UPDATE 2: After almost a year, someone else has uploaded this tune, scoring a noirish video. Finally this post can be complete, for posterity.
The phone hacking scandal of 2011 inspired MURDOCHTOPUS, but its 2012 birth coincided with revelations of News Corp. involvement in computer hacking, an FBI bribery investigation, the resulting depredations-defense legal fund nearing $1B USD…and Murdoch’s endorsement of Rick Santorum. Further, Murdoch recently tweeted his support for Scottish independence, possibly owing to the Murdochtopus’s striking resemblance to a bagpipes.
Fortunately the Murdochtopus is made of dyed, anodized aluminum, and therefore colorfast, weatherproof and a poor conductor of heat and electricity. As such it will doubtless survive its electrified kingdom crashing around it with such force that the rubble stops only at a sewer splashdown. Yet The Sun never sets on this empire, for its body is made from a streetlight reflector, disabled and torn as a refutation of the maxim: “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
The lost foam-cast tentacles preserve the undulatory movements of the octopus, and the lost wax-cast face is that of the legendary mug at its most cheery and unflappable. As empires go, it’s a decent housepet—but you’ll never train it on newspaper.
