I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: FLAMING LIPS-“Two Blobs Fucking” (2011).

As I understand it, the Flaming Lips will be releasing an EP a month for the next twelve months–all in an unusual manner.  The first track, “Two Blobs Fucking” comes as a 12-part free video download.  Like with their album Zaireeka (which had 4 discs that you were supposed to play simultaneously to get the full effect), this song  comes as 12 separate audio tracks.  According to the online instructions, you’re supposed to get 12 friends with iPhones to each download a section and to play them at exactly the same time.  I don’t have an iPhone (or 12 friends that I could get in the same place at the same time to listen to a song), so I did the next best thing: I used YouTube Downloader, converted the tracks to WAV and then mixed them with Audacity.

I have received many CDs over the years that have mixing technology where you can play certain tracks and not others, but it’s very rare that I play around with them.  This whole process was easy enough that I made 20 different mixes of the song.

The “full” version is a fascinating amalgam of noises with a very cool riff that opens the track.  About midway through, the whole song is taken over by noise–a distorted squealing noise–for a few seconds.  And then the song continues as it was with gentle washes of sound.

The twelve tracks include the main riff, the riff as done by “voices” (doh doh doh), there’s a few noise (guitar) tracks and some noise (animal sound) tracks.  There’s a drum and percussion track as well as the vocal track.

The lyrics are a brief story about Wayne finding a dumpster from a factory which makes and discards manikin body parts.

It’s a weird track.  It’s not their best by any means, and the lyrics are hard to hear for the most part (unless you isolate them, of course).  But having now listened to it so many different ways, I’ve rally grown fond of it.  The riff itself is as I said, simple, but very cool.

It’s a neat experiment and nice that it was free (unlike their second release–a USB drive that is buried inside a candy skull which costs $150).

[READ: May 23, 2011] “Deniers”

This is, as far as I can tell, the first short fiction piece that Lipsyte has had published (please correct if I’m wrong), aside from that really short piece in The Revolution Will be Accessorized.  I enjoyed The Ask quite a lot, and I was excited to read more from him.

This piece, as the title implies, plays around with types of denial.  But it is self-denial that they experience.  The main character is Mandy, an adult whose father, Jacob,  is still alive but who has recently been put into a nursing home.  The opening of the story is more about Jacob.  More specifically, it’s about how Jacob relates (or doesn’t) to Mandy.  Jacob is a holocaust survivor, but he has barely said one word about it (or, really, anything) to Mandy.

Through a series of flashbacks, we see Mandy’s childhood with this distant father.  We also see what happened between Jacob and his wife–a fascinating story of duplicity on almost everyone’s part (and which is wonderfully encapsulated by the picture that accompanies the story (a Shell station lit up at night with the light from the letter “S” unlit).

But the story is really more about Mandy’s present life.  She was dating a man who she used to smoke crack with.  They broke up (when she caught him with someone else) and she has been going to AA (or the crack equivalent) for several weeks.  (I actually didn’t know you could get clean from smoking crack, so I guess I learned something).

She has also been working for a while at the Jewish Community Center teaching ballet aerobics (she wanted to be a dancer, but what are you gonna do?).  One night a man is waiting outside of her class.  He asks her about the class and is more than a little flirty with her.  She’s unsure what to think, as he seems off somehow.  She blows him off as best she can, but there he is the next time she teaches the class.  She asks why he didn’t sign up for the class.  He says he’s not Jewish and didn’t know if he could take the classes there.  She is somewhat charmed by him and as the story progresses, she meets him for dinner (and a drink–but just one glass of wine).  He slowly reveals his own denials, and why he sought her ought specifically which will directly affect her life and her desire to date him.

I loved that the storyline returned to a book that Mandy had read when she was a teenager–it wasn’t foreshadowing so much as a wonderful sense of continuity.  And I found the revelation and the finale to be quite surprising.

Overall this was an excellent story, confirming that Lipsyte is on a major roll!