SOUNDTRACK: QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE-“My God is the Sun” (2013)
After a six-year hiatus, QotSA is back with this slinky song. It has the sleazy feel that Homme does so well (how does he do that?). This song feels a little more guitar based (meaning it is a bit more trebly–with interesting echoes on the guitars). It’s not as immediately catchy as their bigger hits, but it’s got all the elements you look for from QotSA.
It opens with some slashing sounds and then the riff kicks in. The song is propulsive but somehow doesn’t feel as fast as some of their earlier tracks. Which is not to say it’s mellow at all. And once Homme starts singing, well, it’s like they never went away. There’s a lengthy middle instrumental section which is quite interesting and otherworldly, but it never gives up the propulsion, especially as the end gets faster and faster.
[READ: April 8, 2013] The Mays XX
This is another book that I saw at work and wanted to read (this job is wrecking my already long list of books to read). I had some difficulty cataloging it (for various reasons), which meant I had to pour over contents. And the more I looked it over the more I realized that I wanted to read it.
So The Mays Anthology publishes the best new student writing and art from Cambridge and Oxford Universities. Read more about it at their website. I’d never heard of The Mays before, but when I saw that John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats was a guest editor, I thought it might be a fun collection tread through.
Issue 20 features poetry, a graphic novel, photography and prose. The other editors are Andrew Griffin (general), Sebastiano Barassi (Visual Arts), Tao Lin and Toby Litt (Prose) and of course, Darnielle (Poetry).
I was really delighted with the prose in this issue. None of the stories are more than 1,000 words, which I decided is a wonderful length for a story. I’m going to talk about the stories, but not so much about the poetry or art.
Darnielle’s introduction to the poetry section was excellent and really resonated with me because of my ideas and fears about poetry (how we feel stupid if we don’t get poetry). He then explained the things that he looked for in this poetry and I imagined that i would love every piece here. I didn’t, but on the whole I really liked the poetry.
POETRY
PHOEBE DICKERSON-“Other Side,” “Here”
ADA GAFTER-O-HIGGINS “[‘Cock | Y Smile…’]. I liked the cleverness of this one.
ROBYN LOWE-“Fragment”
RICHARD O’BRIEN-“Actaeon”
JACK SHACKLETON-“The Jellyfish,” “The Paper Plane.” I liked The Jellyfish quite a lot.
SCOTT ANNETT-“Cranes”
SUSIE CRONIN-“Teaching a Tiny Man to Swim”
ROWAN EVANS-“from Return Songs” “I The Crew of Henry Tudor” “from Rains”
GEORGIA R. WAGSTAFF-“Schmetterling.”
ALEXANDER FREER-“24 Missiles” “‘Preliminary Communication’ (1893) I liked 24 Missiles even though it was so literal. The music that the words created was quite mesmerizing.
TOBY LLOYD-“My Dream of Meeting John Berryman.” I really enjoyed the image of a poet braiding dead poets’ hair into his beard.
TIM WATERS-“Enter”
JAMES McKNIGHT-“Fragment”
CINEMAYS
LEWIS WYNN-“Dawn and Dusk”
The simple line art was very effective for this story of resurrected London.
VISUAL ART
The visual art was an eclectic mix of photography, sculpture and painting. None of it blew me away but there were some cool images.
JONAS LEONHARD TINIUS
CRYSTAL DING-“Three Pieces”
EMMA WOODWARD
LOUISE BENSON-“Two Pieces”
ALICE ZOO-“Two Pieces”
CineMays-“Stills from ‘Courtly Love’ and ‘Vacant'”
CLAUDIA STOCKER
CHLOE SPIBY LOH
LAWRENCE DUNN-“Two Pieces”
PROSE
FELIX BAZALGETTE-“The Myth of Sisyphus”
I really enjoyed this piece. It mocks The Book of Eli but also plays with ideas in it. In the future there is no record of Kafka, but the narrator remembers some of his stories. There was something about the narrator that made this really effective.
FELIX BAZALGETTE-“Bleach”
I didn’t realize that was by the same author. I really liked this one too. It is very different and concerns a woman and the cleanliness of an orifice. It is very funny in a very unexpected way.
ALICE BLACKHURST-“A Survival Story”
This story was told in sections, in a disjointed way. I had to re-read a part to understand just what happened, but it concerns an impulsive kid and the trouble he gets into at the Golden Gate Bridge. I enjoyed this one too.
CLEMMY PLEMING-“The Causeway”
A girl and her sister collect crabs from the water and eventually toss them back, but when a boy comes and actually harms the crabs, that changes matters. The visceral ending was quite exciting.
ENRICO CIONI-“Fame”
I loved the funny naiveté of the way this story was told. I feel like it’s the kind of story I like a lot but don’t get to read much. In it, Godzilla lives on the narrator’s island and makes an annual pilgrimage out to get lunch with his sweetheart. I really enjoyed this one a lot.
JAMIE PATTON-“The Men That Will Not Be Blamed for Nothing”
I’m not sure why this story was printed sideways (so you had to flip the book to read it across the center). There’s something going on in this story, something to do with Jack The Ripper, but I found it hard to read (and I believe that was deliberate) and didn’t feel like putting in the effort for the reward.
EMILY MARCHANT-[‘America was Named…’]
This brief story was a sort of vignette that I didn’t get much from.
EMMA LEVINKIND-“War”
This was a funny but pointed story about waging war and why one might do it. Or more to the point, why excuses don’t work for making up a war. And it was funny too.
JOANNA MAVRON-“The Astronaut’s Wife”
I enjoyed the twist of this story even if I kind of saw it coming. NASA cancels manned missions, but that can’t stop an astronaut!
SUSIE CRONIN-“Being Vazaha Be”
I didn’t get this one at all.
JIM KITCHEN-“Pet Shop Toys”
I didn’t like this story because of the title, but it won me over (which was not easy as it was only one paragraph long). It’s a metafiction piece that was quite clever.
BETTY LIOU-“Trial 104”
Set in an unexpected future, 104 is a trial of flight, and how it can be used as a punishment.
CHRISTINA FARLEY-“Professor Farthyng and the Bicycle”
This was a really strange short piece in which the wrong words were used throughout. It wasn’t exactly funny, but it was odd.
J. KWONG-“from The Reunion”
Reunion stories are always fun and this is no exception. The narrator sees who is going to his high school reunion and sizes up everyone to see if his desire to not go is justified. It is. Until he remembers back to a particular night….
MARIA DIMITROVA-“Soft Lines, I”
Set in Mladost, this is the set up of a story as a man, Alexander, returns to visit his family and is unprepared for what is to come. This felt like the introduction to a much longer piece and not really like a short story at all.
SARA AHMAD-“Ken Livingstone Has Collapsed”
This appears to be conversations, possibly of the same people, possibly others. Perhaps because this was the last story and I wanted to finish the book I just didn’t give it enough attention, but the non linearity of the story just irked me more than it intrigued me.
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So, all in all, this was a cool collection of stuff. I would definitely consider looking for earlier books in the series.
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