Hatebeak
Hatebeak: "Face-crushing guitars, head-pounding drums, bass so low it’ll make you vacate your bowels, and vocals so scorching, so extreme, they can’t be human. They’re not. This death metal outfit with a parrot for a singer takes your head off with two stabs to the throat. That’s right, a parrot for a singer, coming at you without mercy, Hatebeak pecks your eyes out and assaults your ears in a flurry of pummeling riffs and grey feathers that leaves you lying in a pool of blood begging for more. The first metal band in history with an avian vocalist!"
The cover of the 7" is an homage to Judas Priest's Screaming For Vengeance and you get two Hatebeak songs: "Beak of Putrefaction" and "God of Empty Nest." The first pressing of the record has sold out. Man, why didn't we get these sorts of things when eP was in its full metal days? Oh, right, it hadn't been done yet. Still, almost worth coming out of hiatus to review this one.
Speaking of metal and eP, Sabrina Haines' Underground Metal Primer, while five years old now, is still an educational read, especially for old farts like me for whom the metal pendulum has swung back into "acceptable listening" again.
[Thanks, Craig, for the Hatebeak link. We're still laughing about it at home.]
Serial Thinking
I'm thinking about serial fiction. I just started reading The Leopard Mask, Book One of The Guin Saga, a Japanese high fantasy series which is being translated into English by Vertical Inc. The series runs to 100 books and, as I've read, the author is still banging away at them, having reached the 87th book. Now, this is a pretty serious commitment of time and energy, both on the part of the reader and the author. While this isn't too terribly different than other genre serial fiction (all those pulp action novels that I used to read as a kid -- Mack Bolan/Stony Man adventure series, Perry Rhodan, Edgar Rice Burroughs' numerous series) or even comics books, the difference here (I hope) is that Kaoru Kurimoto has a plan and that the 100 book outline encompasses the entire "story" of Guin, the leopard-faced hero. This is what excites me about serial fiction: the idea of a truly epic adventure that has an end and that requires a commitment of time and attention on the part of the readership.
The trouble with the pulp novels and a large number of comic books is that they're set up to be written by multiple individuals and to be accessible at any point by new readership which means that characters can't change from book to book or floppy to floppy because that would restrict entry or confuse the readership by the fluctuations and reversals of change which would occur. Admittedly, serial fiction (and I'm including serial work on television as well) has gotten better about demanding and requiring your complete attention to the work. You don't have to go back and read all of it from the beginning in order to play, but it certainly helps your appreciation of the nuances.
Babylon 5 is a perfect example. J. Michael Straczynski had a five-year plan and, every time I dropped in for a few episodes, I had to play catch up with the changes that had occurred. I passed on the last seasons of 24 and Alias and, if I want to get involved in them again, I'll have to go back because a great deal has changed. There are serial adventures which require constancy and awareness of the entire series in order for participation. These are the ones which are worth my time.
The ones which are written to be accessible at any given point are stagnant and, just as easily as you can enter at any time, you can leave because you know that nothing will ever change.
It was lovely to watch Grant Morrison make huge sweeping changes to the X-men mythology with his run on the New X-men. Nothing was sacred, everything became mutable, and it was possible that no one would survive. Yes, I was there and I had a good time. It's equally disappointing to watch Chris Claremont now attempt to undo everything that Morrison had done, and I think it's entirely symptomatic of what's strangling the comic book industry (and what's wrong with the slavish obsession fans have with their caped crusaders): nothing can flourish where the core axiom is "nothing changes."
So, yes, give me serial fiction that has a point, that has a future, and has an overall plan. What is rolling around my head this morning is how would one go about planning a 100 book series. Say they're each 60,000 words and you churn out four a year. This is still a twenty year commitment of time (Dave Sim did it. How long did it take him to Cerebus? 23 years?). You'll probably need a year or two of planning to ensure that you've got an overall outline and that you know how it ends. You can't draw a line without two points. It's a lifetime of work and the easiest course to follow would be the lifetime of your character. Have you got enough to say about one person's life to fill six million words? Can you keep an audience's attention for twenty years and not get trapped by the same stagnancy which pervades the pulpier serial fiction?
I like to consider the impossible tasks. It's not just enough to want to finish one book; I have to dream about what it would be like to extend an idea out to 100 books, not just because I can but because I like to complicate things unnecessarily. Actually, I consider these things because I would like to read them and, for me as a writer, the first order of business has got to be that the work is something that I want to read. If not, then I'm just hacking away at the page, going through the motions.
Twenty years. Solomon will be in college. Wouldn't that be something? The little dude will just be finishing school and getting ready to start his career. I can turn his room at home into a library. I'll need some place to store the complete series so that I can point to it and say, "This put Solomon through college."
Solomon, on the other hand, will point to the shelf and say, "My Dad is a nut." But, hopefully, he'll say it with pride.
Number Nine, Number Nine
A long time ago, when earpollution was in its first year, we got a piece of fan mail that accused us hiding subliminal numeric codes in our music commentary. We hadn't, but in order to fit the perceptions of our fans, we started to, and the first subliminal was the number nine. Which also happened to be my apartment number at the time.
Nines, you see, it's all about the nines. It symbolizes both the end and the beginning. When you multiply any number by nine and add the resulting digits together, you will ultimately get nine again which is why the Hebrews consider nine as the symbol of immutable Truth. Joseph Campbell's mystic number -- 432 -- adds up to nine. It is the first square of an odd prime; it is, in fact, the trinity of trinities and is the culmination of everything prior to its becoming nothing once again.
On a personal level, nine is the sum of the two digits of my age, and apparently this is the year where I'm supposed to end and begin things. In the spirit of beginnings, I'm very pleased to announce that I've been chosen to be Misfit #9 at the Misfit Library. We -- and when I say that now, I'm not going all royal on you -- have plans for the world.
One of the first thing a new Misfit does is offer up a piece of fiction for the world. My offering is "Chance Island," a fable from Empire City. Click here to go to the Misfits' Library and give it a read.
Biomusicology
An article in the New York Times today about biomusicology: "But music has a power unique among forms of human communication: it can teach itself. Gradually over repeated hearings, without the use of a dictionary or any reference to the world outside, music shows how it is to be understood. The listener begins to hear patterns, repeated motifs and changes in meter and realizes that something is happening, that sounds have punctuation, that phrases are being manipulated, transformed and recombined.
"Gradually, the listener gains a form of knowledge without ever referring to anything outside the music. Sounds create their own context. They begin to make sense. Similar processes with varying richness and power take place in all forms of music, which is why it is much easier to understand another culture's music than another culture's language."
It's also how we learn language. We had a point driven home during Solomon's sixth month baby visit. He understands language -- at least, what language is being spoken to him -- by its musical cadence. He doesn't understand the words, but he knows the difference between English and Spanish and others.
There's another article from a few months back that I think I linked here as well which argued just how music was the core of language. So, reductio ad absurdum, language equals math.
Or something like that.
The Quasi-Random Links of the Day
Do you ever start wondering if you're ever going to have time to "get back" to those things which catch your interest but which you just don't have the time to fully explore now? Yeah, I'm here, but I should be there, and I'll never get back to here. But, in case I do, here are some things that I'd like to find when I return.
Meat Beat Manifesto remixes. The Fans Who Are Musicians Remix Project has uploaded a good assortment of MP3s. Artists remixes and reconstructing Meat Beat Manifesto which is like putting another layer of chocolate frosting on a double chocolate cake.
Matt Bogrhi and Jason Sloan have a new record out at Kikapu. I've got a folder on my inbox at home that has more than fifty unread digests concerning netlabel releases. I'm not going to get to them either. Bogrhi and Sloan do the slow drone thing with treated guitars and it's a treat. When you've got the time to slow down and enjoy it. Damn, I really need to get back to this one.
US Frequency Allocation Chart. A handy thing that'll be useful for a throwaway reference in the BOOK OF LIES. It'll make me look like I know what I'm talking about.
There's an entire wealth of information about Nikola Telsa that I want to get to as well. That's really going to be throwaway texturing, but man, it would be good to have.
And finally, Loren Jan Wilson has crafted a critique of music criticism in a way that only a data engineer could. The pitchformula statistically renders music criticism at Pitchfork in such a way that Wilson can then use this data to craft "critically successful" toons. Science working to reduce the magic to an equation.
Day of Joyce
A little bit of a server hiccup here has prevented me from leaving little notes for the world these last few days. Happily that is all better today and there is still time (here in the Pacific Time Zone) to celebrate Bloomsday. Today is the 100th anniversary of the events which take place in James Joyce's Ulysses, that day when Leopold Bloom made his eventful way across Dublin and the novel was forever changed.
Bloomsday is celebrated quite extensively in Ireland and was only marred slightly this year when Stephen Joyce tried to assert his familial copyright over the text and prevent the public reading of the text (including several presentations of the 27 hour fully unabridged audio CD version).
~sigh~
Over here, my contact with Joyce today came when I was perusing the course lists at Robert Anton Wilson's Maybe Logic Academy. Joyce's Finnegan's Wake was "supplemental" reading for a number of courses.
Yeah, 'cause if dissecting arcane knowledge and mystical philosophical systems wasn't enough to keep one busy for a lifetime, there's always a little dipping into Finnegan to keep the malingerers off the streets.
My New Sig Line
"The paranoid bunny magus should blog more often. "
Courtesy of Travis, whose mind is glowing.
He's referencing a bit of a return to form over at SYMBOLIC where I go off on the concept of the Apocalyptic Thriller. It'll show up here in a few weeks when the mirroring catches up, but if you don't want to wait...
Location of Atlantis...This Week
From BBConline: "Satellite photos of southern Spain reveal features on the ground appearing to match descriptions made by Greek scholar Plato of the fabled utopia. Dr Rainer Kühne thinks the 'island' of Atlantis simply referred to a region of the southern Spanish coast destroyed by a flood between 800 BC and 500 BC."
He lays out his theory pretty well and it is like anything else about Atlantis or any other fabled civilization or secret of the universe: there is room for interpretation. Though Kühne work the evidence pretty hard. Kühne's CV lists this article -- 15. R. W. Kühne, Location and Dating of Atlantis, Antiquity, 78, 300 (2004) -- and gives a URL to Antiquity magazine that doesn't work. Issue 300 appears to be the summer issue and it hasn't shown up online yet.
Just a Rock, After All
Last night about 2:40 in the AM, the sky over Western Washington lit up like day as a small bolide -- a type of meteor that acts like a fireball as it creases the atmosphere -- came plummeting out of the heavens. People in about a 260 mile stretch along the Puget Sound reported sonic booms and bright lights. No alien invasion, no anti-matter explosion, no paranormal event, no Tunguska event. In the end, just a rock falling down.
I slept through the whole thing, and all I had this morning was a swirly on the back of my skull where a cow licked my noggin while I was napping.
In Perpetuity
Things exist forever on the Internet. Case in point #34955: An Exhibition of material from the Monash University Library Rare Book Collection. The exhibit took place during the summer of 1998 way off in Australia and since my time traveling and physical space traveling skills aren't up to task of whisking me to Australia in '98, I can experience the next best thing.
Though, I do miss out on people watching. It would have been fun to see who lingered over what displays during the run of this exhibit.
[via Travis and BoingBoing]