I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-SYR 4: Goodbye 20th Century (1999).

This SYR recording consists of Sonic Youth’s interpretations of 20th century composers’ works.  Some of the composers are obscure, but a few are more or less household names: John Cage, Yoko Ono, maybe Steve Reich.  I knew a few of these composers from Kronos Quartet, but for the most part the pieces are all new to me.  Since I don’t know the original pieces I have no idea how faithful they are.

The most fascinating thing about the disc is the CD-ROM video of “Piano Piece #13 (Carpenter’s Piece)” which shows the band performing.  The “song” is literally the band nailing the keys of a piano down.

There are a number of guests on the CD, including the first (I think) performance by Coco Haley Gordon Moore (on the 17 second “Voice Piece for Soprano”).  And, the liner notes are all in English.

This is the longest SYR disc (at over an hour and a half) and it is a fascinating mix of noises and sounds and screams and spoken bits (okay okay okay okay okay okay okay).

This is not for everyone, not even the average Sonic Youth fan.  There’s absolutely nothing in the way of “songs” here.  The abstractness of the disc is palpable.  And, clearly, just knowing that one of the pieces is a bunch of people nailing keys of a piano, you get a fair idea of the breadth of “music” that the disc covers.

[RE-READ August 19th] J.O.I. Filmography

Before reading this week’s section, I had noticed that many people on Infinite Summer (and elsewhere) have discussed James’ films and how they relate to incidents in the overall story.  So, I decided to go back and re-read his filmography Endnote, just to see what else I could learn.

In general, with more background, the Endnote is much more interesting. The first batch of films are more amusing to read about just to see the emphasis on pain and disfigurement.  We also see that he had been using students and teachers from E.T.A. in his films for a while.

We have had an in-depth look at some of these earlier films: The Medusa v. The Odalisque; Homo Duplex, The Joke, The ONANtiad (which the endnote describes as unfunny).  But the ones we haven’t seen show distinct commentary about the state of the country since the Reconfiguration (it’s clear that J.O.I. was against it).  The American Century As Seen Through a Brick deals with anti-O.N.A.N. riots; The Universe Lashes Out is about the evacuation of New Hampshire during the Reconfiguration; Poultry in Motion concerns the toxification of Thanksgiving Turkeys; and No Troy is about miscalibrated Waste Displacement Units that crashed into Troy, NY (which was mentioned in the scene about people looking for entertainment outside of their living rooms).

[Unrelated to the story, on page 990 of my paperback IJ (with forward by Dave Eggers) every italicized word contains a superscript 1 after it (indicating, what? more footnotes?) It is an astonishingly weird glitch/typo and I can’t believe that it wasn’t spotted before going to print as it makes the titles actually harder to read.]

But once you get to Valuable Coupon has Been Removed (Year of Tucks…), things get very interesting.  First, his production company has changed from Latrodectus Mactans (which is a black widow) Productions to Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited.

And, suddenly the plots of the movies sound very familiar.

Valuable Coupon Has Been Removed is described as “A boy helps his alcoholic – delusional father & dissociated mother dismantle their bed to search for rodents and later he intuits the future feasibility of D.T,.-cycle lithiumized annular fusion.  [And I say, That Should Sound Familiar–(T.S.S.F.)]

Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators: Children and adolescents play a nearly incomprehensible nuclear strategy game with tennis equipment against the real or holographic backdrop of sabotaged ATHSCME 1900 atmospheric displacement towers. [Okay, so obviously that’s Eschaton…from a number of years ago (Pemulis noted that he didn’t START Eschaton, he just made it better).  I guess the ATHSCME towers are an anti-Reconfiguration commentary?]

Stand Behind the Men Behind the Wire concerns feral infants that alleged crushed Lowell, MA.  [We haven’t seen anything of this yet, although Lenz was talking about The Infant in the Concavity.  And, of course we are well aware of the feral creatures all over Reconfigured Territory.  It will be interesting to see if we get any actual look at this incident.]

As of Yore: A middle-aged tennis instructor, preparing to instruct his son in tennis, becomes intoxicated in the family’s garage and subjects his son to a rambling monologue while the son weeps and perspires.  [(T.S.S.F.)  Also, DFW himself is a much-admitted sweaty fellow, so it sounds like he empathizes somewhat.  There’s an earlier film about a sweaty boy, Death in Scarsdale in which Marlon Bain is treated for excessive perspiration.]

We skip a few films here, although Low Temperature Civics seems like it might make an appearance somewhere later.

(At Least) Three Cheers for Cause and Effect: The headmaster of a newly constructed high-altitude sports academy becomes neurotically obsessed with litigation over the construction’s ancillary damage to a V.A. hospital far below, as a way of diverting himself from his wife’s poorly hidden affair with the academically renowned mathematical topologist who is acting as the project’s architect. [Played by, really?, Hugh G. Rection.  So, we haven’t seen all of this film, but we have certainly heard about the problem with the grounds destroying the V.A. Hospital.  And, although we don’t know specifically (or even if it was with an architect), we’re learning more and more about Avril’s dalliances.]

(The) Desire to Desire: features Madame Psychosis as a beautiful cadaver, who died trying to rescue her sister from a feral infant.  [No direct connection to anything yet, but M.P. appears dead or as Death quite a lot].

Safe Boating is No Accident.  This is notable because Madame Psychosis plays a woman whose face is grotesquely mangled by an outboard propeller.  [We haven’t heard anything like this yet, and who knows if it has any bearing on why she wears a veil–was she lying to Gately in their chat?  But in the very next film that features M.P.]:

The Night Wears a Sombrero: Madame Psychosis’ character is a “veiled nun.”  [Again, is this significant?  Does it have anything to do with her previous role?  Has she started wearing the veil at this time or did the film influence her?]

The next film is a bit different for my purposes, but is still interesting. Accomplice! features a tattooed street hustler (played by Stokely ‘Dark Star’ McNair).  [I can’t even imagine how this weird connection to Poor Tony will play out anywhere else in the book.]

Dial C for Concupiscence is a convoluted plot which ends with a woman who falls in love with an armless (!) Near Eastern medical attache.  [As with the mention from Marlon Bain in the letter, there is a rumor about Avril and a medical attache.  Of course, we all remember that the medical attache was the first victim of The Entertainment.]

Insubstantial Country.  [I don’t want to read too much into this yet, BUT]: a filmmaker either suffers a temporal lobe seizure and becomes mute or else is the victim of everyone else’s delusion that his temporal lobe seizure has left him mute.  [There’s so much to think about with this film description.  But before I even proceed, I’ll note that this 30 minute film was followed by this 5 minute film]:

It Was a Great Marvel That He Was in the Father Without Knowing Him.  [This one has been mentioned many times in people’s comments, and is was the first indication that something may be up with the filmography].  A father suffering from the delusion that his etymologically precocious son is pretending to be mute poses as a ‘professional conversationalist’ in order to draw the boy out.  [(T.S.S.F.)  Obviously we saw that scene with Hal and the therapist.  And yet, when combined with the previous film, it clouds the issues of exactly what is going on.  Hal wasn’t mute when James was alive.  Hal is some kind of mute in that opening scene of the book. And in the previous movie it could be James that is mute.  Woah].

The final film described (before Infinite Jest (V), which is clearly the Entertainment) is The Film Adaptation of Peter Weiss’s ‘The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.’ Anyone who knows the story of Marat/Sade knows what this is all about.  This film features M.P. as Death.  [We’ve seen her as Death in another film.  But as to the actual connection to anything, I’m not sure].

And then Infinite Jest (V).  A note in the filmography says that Canadian archivist, Tête-Bêche, lists the film as distributed posthumously through Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited through provisions in the filmmakers’ will.  Tête-Bêche, according to Wikipedia is French for “head-to-tail” and usually refers to a joined pair of stamps in which one is upside-down in relation to the other.  Now, exactly what THAT means I’m not sure.  But it clearly isn’t an accident.

Okay, that’s a lot to think about.  But the overarching question is, are those lengthy scenes in the books James’ films? (His recollection of the squeaky bed in the textbook does not concern a rodent).  Are we witnessing the events that led to him making the films?  What is reality and what is film?  And will we ever find out?

Holy cow.