SOUNDTRACK: DUCKTAILS-“Letter of Intent” (SXSW, March 22, 2013).
Ducktails is a side project from the guy from the band Real Estate. I liked some Real Estate songs, but this is the first I’ve heard of Ducktails. The write up on NPR talks about them being an experimental live band, so I was anticipating something wild.
But this proves to be a very sedate, kind of dull synth heavy track–the guitars are kind of tossed on there in a very 80s new wave fashion, and there’s very little beyond the washes of synths. There’s really nothing here I’d want to hear again.
[READ: March 19, 2013] “Not Interested”
I’m always mixed about Lydia Davis’ stuff. She writes very very short pieces and most of them seem to be not so much stories as observations, ideas or even things that just seem to pass through her mind. Some of them are amazing–insightful or funny–which convey a lot in a concise piece of writing. And others seem just kind of flat. This is one that I am utterly ambivalent about (which is maybe the point?).
It’s not often that you read something that starts, “I’m simply not interested in reading this book.”
The whole short story (and it’s not a story in the conventional sense) is that the narrator is not really interested in doing things lately. In particular, reading new books and picking up the stick s in the yard. She spends a bunch of time talking about how sometimes picking up the sticks is okay but not now. In fact, she’s just bored of everything. She’s even bored by her own dreams. And really, that’s it.
Rather than a story or even fiction, it just seems like something that was on Davis’ mind and she wrote it down. If a friend said these things to you, you’d nod and change the subject to something more interesting. I don’t quite understand who wants to read this kind of “fiction.” Even the language isn’t all that compelling–it doesn’t feel like it has been honed to a fine point.
I did like the end of the piece where she says to the new authors “please spare me your imagination,” but overall, it’s just not that interesting.
I Just Read About That... 
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