Category: ultracultural

Modern Prometheus

For lack of a paperback to read during a long bus ride, I turned to Project Gutenberg on my phone and started re-reading Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. I had forgotten the set-up of the story, in which a third-party narrator — Robert Walton — encounters the doctor while on a polar expedition. But before that happens, Walton is yearning for companionship and writes this tender passage in a letter to his sister:

I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties.

Shelley had her own intentions for that sentiment that had nothing to do with why those words are such a kick in the gut to me, but still: sigh.

All lifestyles

I don’t know how I managed to miss this bit of type nerdery for so long, but I just noticed these lyrics in “All Lifestyles”, from the Beastie Boys’ 2004 album To the 5 Boroughs:

So what’cha want? So what’cha need?
I’ve got the fonts you want to read
Get in the game you gotta scheme

One of these days, I’m going to have to properly build my list of songs that intersect with typography. I know there’s more than just this and “German Bold Italic” out there.

The Dap-Tone Super Soul Review!

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings at Pori JazzTake a minute and picture that woman working as a corrections officer at Rikers. The fact that an incredible singer like Sharon Jones languished in obscurity for years doing jobs like that is part of the tragedy of her background and the triumph of her finding success now. It’s terrible to think of that voice being wasted for so long, but I guess it took the right combination of people and opportunities — and perhaps enough time for a renewed interest in soul music to swing around — for Sharon to finally connext with Daptone Records and bust out once and for all.

Daptone’s whole commitment to an authentic late-60s/early-70s soul sound would be a grating gimmick if they weren’t in earnest and didn’t get it all so right. They have such a good touch for showcasing incredible talent that perfectly channels the spirit of the original experience.

I’v been listening to Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings for a few years, but had never had a chance to catch them live until last night, when they played with a few other artists from the Daptone stable — Charles Bradley and the Menahan Street Band — at the Barbican Centre. As much as I was looking forward to the show, it turned out to be so much better than I expected. There was so much energy on stage, and such a rich, tight sound. Sharon is much, much funnier than you’d guess from the soulful intensity of her singing voice, and she commands the stage with personality and dance moves that would put a woman half her age to shame. I just wish I had nearly as much energy as she’s got.

A Barbara Pym moment

“To say that a moment is ‘very Barbara Pym’ is to say that it is a moment of self-observed, poignant acceptance of the modesty of one’s circumstances, of one’s peripheral position. A Barbara Pym moment also occurs when one realises that for those whom one is observing, one will never be an object of love. Tolerant affection, perhaps, but never deep, passionate love. Indeed, one is not really entitled to expect such an emotion, although it is ennobling, some say, to observe it in others.”

— Alexander McCall Smith, about Excellent Women

Ziggy played guitar here

After living out of suitcases for the past few months, I finally get to settle down again this month. I was spared the horrors and aggravation of gambling on strangers when some friends of mine in Greenwich let me know that one of them was moving out and freeing up a room, a much better situation — in terms of rent, location, and housemates — than I was facing otherwise. So I’ll be south of the river again, happily reunited with my books and the rest of my clothes. I’ll also be living in a neighborhood where I’ll be within walking distance of decent food and places to hang out, a welcome relief from the general lack of amenities in Leyton. (It was a nice enough two years in a super flat with a super housemate, but sorry, Leyton, as a neighborhood you kinda suck.)

Ziggy Stardust

On the whole, Greenwich looks like a great area. There’s the nice bit nearby, with the shops and observatory and the river taxi and the park. In the other direction are trains which will get me up to my studio or down to the office with minimal fuss. Lots of charm and amenities, to say the least. However, the gentleman whose room I’m taking points out an exciting piece of trivia that dwarfs all of that, at least this morning. It seems as if the pharmacy on the corner down from the new place is actually the site of Underhill Studio, where David Bowie developed Ziggy Stardust.

Early in 1971 Bowie was regarded as washed-up, a one-hit wonder. That summer he worked up Hunky Dory, which was a critics’ fave but initially made no impact on the charts. Then around September 1971 he started work on the album that would make his name: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. And Ziggy, the ultimate rock-’n’roll creation, was hatched at Underhill.

Hunky Dory had been put together in the recording studio, without any preparation. Ziggy was the one time when Bowie worked as a proper band, with guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder and drummer Woody Woodmansey, taking time to work out the songs beforehand. “It was a bit more rock and roll and we were a rock band,” says Bolder. “So doing that album was more like Oh yeah, we know what to do with this. We rehearsed it, we went in and we played. At Underhill Studios in Greenwich.

— Paul Trynka, Starman: David Bowie – The Definitive Biography

There’s a bit more detail at The Greenwich Phantom, but essentially, yeah — I’ll be buying aspirin at the conceptual birthplace of Ziggy Stardust come next month.

Birthplace of Ziggy

Opulence! You own everything!

For a while now, I’ve been joining some pals for a monthly movie night and last night we had a selection of mine, the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning. Every time I come back to this film, I love it just as much as the first time, and it strikes me as more and more poignant as time goes on. It captures a moment, but the further we get from that moment it’s easy to see how much of an impact the whole ball culture has had as it leaked out into pop culture at large. As well-received as this was at the time, its success was a bit of a bitter pill for the subjects of the story, who weren’t able to share in as much of that success as they thought they would. Time has secured a legend for them outside the world of the balls, but the outcome only reinforces what many of them say in the film about their lot in life.

Continue reading “Opulence! You own everything!”

It’s Madison time. Hit it!

Although it’s not the most thrilling clip, it’s cool to see this version of the Madison Time from Baltimore’s Buddy Deane Show, the inspiration for Hairspray’s Corny Collins Show. (And it’s worth looking for other Buddy Deane clips to get a better idea of where the Hairspray aesthetic came from. The hair looks a little flat in this one.) The dance is done with a little more pep in the film:

The Madison sequence has always been a favorite moment in the film. It’s not the funniest or the craziest, but it’s warm and sweet, and a pivotal moment in the story. Really, it’s the part that exposes the sentimental streak that underlies the film. It always catches me off-guard to get a reminder that it was a huge smash with a life of its own outside the John Waters bubble.

The quality of this clip is awful, but here’s the second version of the Madison I ever saw, when it was played on a reel of old music clips between shows at the Somerville Theater some time in the early 90s. I never figured out the context at the time. Most of the other clips turned out to be Scopitone films, and perhaps this was as well, even though it’s not specifically French. It’s the Ray Bryant Combo doing their version, set in a bowling alley:

First things still first

While tidying up a few things in the archives, I came across this post from a little over a decade ago about the first and second First Things First manifestos. These made a huge impact on me at the time, one of those recurring phases when I was extremely aggravated about a lot of the crap that went along with being a graphic designer, and as good manifestos are wont to do, they articulated a lot of pent-up frustrations I had. They’ve also stayed with me in a very conscious way ever since, whether or not I have always been able to effectively follow their calls to action.

The admonition to consider the impact and the ethics of the work that I do has certainly influenced a lot of my choices since then. Thanks to First Things First, I put more energy in working in the non-profit and arts sectors, teaching, making things for personal reasons instead of commercial ones. (Much to my financial ruin over the years, but I certainly bear plenty of the blame for that.) At the moment, I am working for a profit-oriented company for the first time since I read these manifestos, and I’ll admit that some things involved in that give me pause now and again. I still believe, however, that design can be an agent of change, and of improvement. I certainly think that type design can be an incredible tool for these things — improving legibility, literacy, engagement with words. Part of the attraction of working in Indic scripts, for example, is that they so badly need good typefaces to express and promote those languages.

The other thing that strikes me is that in the decade since I read these manifestos, I have met and become a colleague to many of the people behind them, and have been encouraged by their examples — and often the things they’ve actually said to me — to keep the faith and keep trying to use my talents to make things better if I can, to try and improve my profession at the very least, and hopefully make things better in the world at large now and again if possible.

10 things every role model needs

While I’m at it, here’s a listicle that ran this past Friday:

Hay Festival 2011: John Waters on 10 things every role model needs
Words of wisdom from film director John Waters at the Hay Festival

1. History. You can’t have a one-night-stand role model. No one can become a role model in 24 hours. It helps a lot if you knew them when you were young, so they sort of grow or fester with you, like Johnny Mathis was for me.

2. Be extreme: all my role models have to be. They have to be braver than I’ve ever been. Even to survive success is hard, no matter if it’s widespread success like Johnny Mathis had, or Bobby Boris Pickett, who his whole life just had to sing one song [The Monster Mash]. Today too many people are trying hard to be extreme. For the people I admire it was natural, and they turned it into art.

3. Style You can have bad style, but you have to have some style. That’s why I wrote about Rei Kawakubo, who reinvented fashion to be damaged and to be everything you hoped it was not when you bought an outfit. And she quadrupled the price. That’s a magic trick.

4. Be alarming – I think that’s important. And it’s different from being
shocking. Alarming threatens the very core of your existence, it doesn’t
just shock you – but you don’t know why it makes you nervous at first. You know, St Catherine of Siena drank pus for God. That was important to me because I thought: I want to be her, I don’t want to be half-assed! If I was going to be a Catholic, it would have been before the Reformation.

5. Humour It’s very important to be well-read, but I never understand why people are so sure their partners have to be smart. What kind of smart do they mean? I’m not interested in talking about literature in bed! I like people who can make me laugh. Humour gets you laid, humour gets you hired, humour gets you through life. You don’t get beat up if you can make the person that’s going to beat you up laugh first.

6. Be a troublemaker All art is troublemaking, because why go through all the trouble of making it if you don’t cause a little stir?

7. Bohemianism Bohemia saved my life. And by bohemia I mean all sexualities mixed together, and people who do what they do not to get rich — freedom from suburbia. People who want to fit in but don’t are losers. Bohemians are people who don’t fit in because they don’t want to.

8. Originality Someone unique like Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West, is an easy role model to have. She could fit into any of these categories – her outfit looked like Comme des Garçons, and anybody who could scare children like that… The problem was, I wanted to be her. And as I turn 65, that has sort of come true.

9. Neuroses I think it helps to be neurotic. Neurotic people always end up being in the arts. If your kid fits in while in high school they’re going to be a dull adult. I still see a few people I went to high school with, but the other ones, when they come up to me I say: “I’m sorry, I took LSD, I don’t remember you.” It works, because then they aren’t offended personally. It’s really just manners.

10. Be a little bit insane That’s different from neurotic. You can stay home and be neurotic. You have to go out to be insane. You can be a little bit of both, but both need to be joyous. As long as you can find a moment of joy in even your worst behaviour, it’s something to be thankful for.

[Taken from The Telegraph, 27 May 2011]