SOUNDTRACK: MOGWAI-Ten Rapid (1997).
The release of this disc hot on the heels of Young Team rather confused me, especially when trying to keep track of which discs were “real” and which ones were compilations. This one is a compilation. It’s subtitled: (Collected Recordings 1996–1997). And the fact that it has ten songs on it tells you just how much they released in those two years. (It appears that they released 4 or 5 singles, although all the songs don’t seem to appear on Ten Rapid, and there seems to be a song or two unaccounted for. Wikipedia also suggests that some of the songs were re-recorded for Ten Rapid. Gosh, what’s a completist to do?). And given all that they released back then, it’s also a surprise at how short this collection is (just over 30 minutes).
The amazing thing is how much the disc sounds like a complete recording and not a collection of singles. It is mostly Mogwai’s slower, quieter pieces, and the overall tone is one of “mood” rather than “songs.” And, for those of us who thin of Mogwai as a really loud band, the prominent use of glockenspiel comes as something of a surprise (as does the quiet singing on two of the tracks).
The opener “Summer” is not the same as “Summer [Priority Version]” on Young Team. This one is a beautiful track with glockenspiel while the YT version is much heavier and darker. “Helicon 2” (also known as “New Paths to Helicon, Pt. 2”), is a wonderful track with an interesting riff and texture. On a recent live disc, it was expanded greatly. “Angels vs Aliens” and “Tuner” are the two tracks with vocals. They’re both rather quiet and kind of soothing.
“I am Not Batman” is mostly washes rather than a riff based song. “Ithica 27ϕ9” is one of their best early songs. It’s also the one track here that really experiments with sound dynamics. It opens with a beautiful melody that swirls around for a bit. Then the loud guitars come screaming out until it returns to that melody (and all in under 3 minutes).
The final track “End” is an entirely backwards recordings. Wikipedia says that it is “Helicon 2” backwards, and I’ll take their word for it.
[READ: March 8, 2011] Donald
This book is a speculative piece of fiction that answers the question: what would happen if Donald Rumsfeld was sent to Guantanamo Prison. Note also that the cover is a parody of the cover of Rumsfeld’s own memoir (released around the same time).
The main character is clearly Rumsfeld, although he is never mentioned by his full name, always “Donald.” But his description and his biography make it obvious that it is him. There is a Note at the end of the book which states that the information about Donald is as accurate as possible.
First we see Donald in a library, presumably working on his memoirs. He is accosted by a young kid who asks him questions. Donald is annoyed by the kid and more or less blows him off. Donald then has a fancy dinner with his wife and “Ed and Peggy” (two people who I can’t place historically).
That evening, masked people break into Donald’s home and haul him off to a prison (he is bound and his head is covered so he doesn’t know where). The rest of the book sees him taken from one prison to the next, tortured in various ways (nothing too graphic, most of the torture consists of thinks like disrupting sleep, keeping the temperature really hot or really cold, and asking him lots and lots of questions, sometimes for 20 hours at a time. There is no physical torture (again, it’s not graphic).
The whole torture/interrogation sequences are also (according to the note in the back) taken from actual accounts of people who were in Guantanamo. But again, the story is not designed as any kind of torture porn or anything like that. In fact, it’s not even any kind of twisted fantasy about “getting even with” Rumsfeld (even though it seems to be, if you read the blurb on the back).
What it does is build incredible amounts of sympathy for anyone caught up in the war on terror. The things that happen to Donald are dreadful (and again, from the photos we’ve seen, they are still mild on the scale of things). They are dehumanizing and really incredible (in the true sense of the word). And if there are innocent people there (which we’re pretty sure there are) it’s really a travesty and an embarrassment for our country.
The people who interrogate Donald are pros (American pros). They use every technique they can to get them to talk, but they never tell him what they want him to admit. He is tough and resistant at first. He is also always complimenting “his” soldiers on their excellent performance (which I feel might have backfired). He tries to tell everyone it’s a mistake but the responses vary from silence to abuse. At one point he is even stripped of his garments and left naked with his head shaved.
By the end of the book, it creates a rather sympathetic portrait of Donald. Donald who is a patriot, a soldier, a husband, a father and a human being. In fact, by the end of the story, we don’t know exactly what he has been accused and/or found guilty of . We’re not even sure who his captors are (the book is written from a very close third person perspective, so there’s plenty of unknowns).
And so even those who may delight at the thought of Donald going to Gitmo may come away from this book less sanguine about it than they might have thought. (Although there is one sequence where he anticipates getting waterboarded, and he says that he’s never experienced it, and you kind of want him to feel what it is really like if he was so cavalier about it).
There are really no winners in the book. Certainly not the prisoners. Certainly not the guards, who are there for longer and longer tours, and who treat all the people as less than human. Not even the interrogators who are awake as long as Donald is and who seem to follow him from place to place hoping to get him to admit something, yet even they don’t seem to know what either.
It’s a Kafkaesque nightmare, and more than anything else, it points out the futility, the wrongness of a place like Gitmo. And how wrong it is that the U.S. should have created and condoned such a thing. And all of that in about 110 pages.
I Just Read About That... 
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