SOOFyahn

You might think Sufjan Stevens is getting his Radiohead and Bjork on in The Age of Adz but you’d be wrong about that. The Age of Adz sounds precisely like Stevens is standing on a tall pile of everything he has already recorded. The strong melody and phrasing, struck through with symphonic arrangements and joyful cacophony of horns, from albums like Sufjan Stevens Invites You To: Come On Feel the Illinoise and Michigan are still here, they are just wrapped in a layer of beats, bleeps and squelches.


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SLAMMATOWN - What Jack? Quaoub Part One

The song sounded like a lilting heart, a real one disgusting with blood and necessary rhythm but there was an unidentifiable lightness to it as well. The melody came in slow and agonisingly low. I couldn’t follow the rhythms, they were organic and structured like the invisible inside of yourself no one else can see.

I don't know what he was singing but everything stopped, the bells, the chatter, wind in the grass. Everything except the backlit clouds stopped a moment to hear his song. It was dark and I couldn’t even make out his silhouette. I know it sounds like I’m always sitting out in a park or a graveyard at night but if you’re a Newtown local you’ll know it’s one of the best places to be.

It was six months before I figured out who was singing in the dark that night. His name is Jack Elias but he performs under the name Quaoub. I’ve got more than one problem with this man but we’ll talk about that later. He conducts himself with a disturbing kind of grace but I don’t think that’s one of the problems. There is grace in his words, movements and most prominently in his songs.

It’s rare that I’m struck so profoundly by a song the first time I hear it. I like to listen to things on repeat until the slow soak of sound unravels inside my head and begins to make sense. This song didn’t need making sense of. This song, for all its lilt and rhythm, had the force of a hammer.

He came and lay down in the grass near where I was sitting. We talked about ritual and meaning and ancestral sorrow. This is where my first problem began. I dislike meeting people that I wish to talk with again, it leaves me feeling hollow, meaningless and dead as the buried we were resting six feet above.

Now that I know who Jack is I am shameless in my quest to hear him play as often as possible. On another night, in another park, I was planning to drunkenly demand to hear him play. Spencer, my good and sage friend, advised me against this. To my delight Jack graciously confiscated a guitar from a nearby man and played songs he hoped I might like. No demanding was necessary.

A girl, some admirer of Spencer’s, rattled a tambourine to accompany Jack and his guitar. Her failure to make any sense of his rhythm whatsoever was more endearing than annoying but it was testament to the complexities of the music. At the conclusion of his small performance Jack smiled at the tambourine girl and told her she done well. He was laughing but we all melted a little because he meant it. Jack’s easy warmth makes it easy for all of us, even me, to feel at home with our own awkwardness and inadequacies.

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SLAMMATOWN - Girl Singers are no good

My friend Spencer is not so keen on what he calls 'girl singers'. I’ve been wondering about this for a while now, been wondering just what exactly is his problem? Now here's a little warning, this is all wild speculation.

I’ve got a theory that Spencer is less keen on 'girl singers' than 'boy singers' because he likes music to be yelling versions of his life back at him. He wants to be inside the song instead of just listening to it from the outside. But first here's a small amount of boring information.

Don't forget to read the rest of this by clicking on the link to RHUM!
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Better to befriend a Lemon than get bitter about his talent

Go read this post by Geoff Lemon because its so much better than what was in my head this evening. For those that are interested, this evening the contents of my head included wondering how to make a cake in the shape of myself, the amount of apples that Paul Simon might buy in one go and what is the most polite way to firmly refuse a man who has expressed a desire to wee either onto or inside of you.

Storage solutions will solve only the problem of storage

I have become confused by furniture. All of these years I have simply pushed around cupboards and drawers with all-day Tetris intent. It has never failed, not until three days after my most recent attempt. This time I have bruised all of my fingers and quite a high proportion of my toes, my record player described a perfect arc before landing upside down and in pieces. The very end of my bed has demonstrated why knots in wood become vulnerable points for anything and my typewriter will not come out of its case. There is one thing I have not moved but only because other people wear pajamas, this will make more sense in less than a minute.

It is quite difficult, I think, to enter into a whiskey-fueled state of rage and typing when I live somewhere called The Peach and when The Peach is populated by people who come home from working, cook food in the kitchen and wear pajamas in the most normal of ways. This is why the bottle of whiskey has not moved from where I placed it three weeks ago. I suspect most people would not like to enter into a whiskey-fueled state of rage and typing but by my calculations I make up only one 6,830,586,985th of most people, this is a startling figure, I should commence cloning operations at once. Statistics have never been my strong point but I feel certain if there was more than one of me it would be easier to throw pajamas to the wind and rage with whiskey and typewriters all through the night.

SLAMMATOWN: Don't worry he's not dead yet

I’ve been writing myself notes with a pen that plays the French National Anthem. This pen features flashing lights and has a miniature Eiffel Tower floating in glitter water. Ordinarily this is not the kind of pen I prefer but I’m making an exception because my Dad bought it for me in Paris. He also gave me pyjamas, a sleep mask and a miniature tube of toothpaste he got for free on the plane. My Dad is not very good with souvenirs but he does have his good points.


One of those good points is the element of surprise...

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I shot the cat with a water pistol because the sandwich was mine

You should have seen the sandwich I just ate. Magnificent! You could even say that this makes me científico sensacional, oh yes, I'm so good at spreading mustard science has fallen to its knees. It might not ever be able to stand again, I'm very sorry about that. I know some people like science or even use it for work, like rocket scientists, or cat scientists, or just plain old boring scientists with no rockets or cats.

SLAMMATOWN - This might be just a little familiar, sorry about that

 First I should tell you my house is named The Peach, it is moderate in size and temperature. I was stealing my fellow Peachette Grizelda's sample packet of Weet-Bix, terrible but true, with a crazed and starved look on my face and a jar of honey in my left hand when the horror first revealed itself. The Weet-Bix was alive! Hiding in the heart of each bick was a wriggling mass of tiny worms*. I've seen the tiny worms before but this is the first time I considered eating them.

You see I've reached a depraved place called 'shall I buy groceries or pay the rent?’.

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Lyndal Irons will sneak up on you

Photo of Madam Squeeze by Lyndal Irons

When I die I hope Lyndal takes photos at the funeral, they'll be awesome, like all her photos are, except for the one she sent me where I'm staring like a crazy lady, but I don't suppose that is her fault. I've sorted out someone to impersonate me at my funeral, next I'll make a mixtape. Maybe I'll wait a few years and see if any more good songs come out.

Click here to visit Lyndal's website.

A day in the life of Dale Slamma at her thankfully part-time job of corporate doom and oppression

I work.

I suffer.

SLAMMATOWN - No Guns For You

Four years ago two things happened, I moved to Sydney and my friend Spencer banned me from owning a gun. Spencer's announcement came out of the blue. We'd been sitting in his lounge room, which was on the front lawn at the time, drinking bad red wine and talking about nothing at all when he announced, 'out of all the people I know you are the one person who should never own a gun'.

Spencer's announcement puzzled me exceedingly. I have never wanted to buy a gun. I don't even know how to get a gun, apart obviously from joining Team Zissou on the Belafonte where all team members are supplied with uniforms, wetsuits and glocks.

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I always thought it would be time to move on when I stop wondering about something. I've stopped wondering about people before, cast them off as solved and useless puzzles but I'm beginning to suspect I might never stop wondering about some places. This afternoon when I was walking home from the thankfully part-time job of corporate doom and oppression I noticed an artist's interpretation of a planned upgrade at the Devonshire St entrance to the tunnel at Central. The artist signed his work and this started me wondering. Who is this man? I know his name is Robert Stewartson or Stewart Robertson or something like that but what kind of artist proudly signs their name to a painting of a planned staircase upgrade? I was going to find out and then I remembered the time I wrote a letter to an architect and the whole thing backfired. This time I'm going to hold back my wonderings, just a little.

I remember standing in the architecture section in the second hand part of Berkelouw Books, in Newtown, some time last year. I saw the same name written in at least fifty books,  I had an idea, did some research and sent the following letter. In an ideal world such letters would not be considered harassment but something else entirely.

Dear Robert Tuckwell,

I first imagined the idea of you upstairs in Berkelouw’s, Newtown. There were so many of your books that I thought you must be dead. You wrote your name in capital letters, deliberate marks more prominent on the downstroke, you did this in every single volume. I sat in a wooden chair and imagined your grey-haired children packing your books into boxes. One of them occasionally ran a finger down a familiar spine, the others repressed their conflicting emotions and pretended it was 3d tetris and thought of mostly of defrosting the freezers in their own crowded houses. One of them decided to stop trying IVF and leaked a single tear on to the front cover of an architectural magazine.

I piled as many volumes into my arms as I could before the weight of them toppled me into an elderly woman in search of engineering books on the subject of home-poured concrete. There are three known reasons for shedding so many beautiful books, death, late onset minimalism or the removal of oneself to a tiny flat in New York with nothing but a double bass, and the burning desire to become a backing bassist for a coffeehouse beat poet. Dear Robert Tuckwell that form of poetry has never captured my heart and this is why I have hoped, for three hours, that you were dead.

I bought one book, consigning the others to an uncertain fate. The engineer peered over the top of her book on music concrète as I returned the last volume to the top shelf without needing to stand on my toes.  My deceased and imagined Robert Tuckwell ghosted me down the warehouse stairs and the length of old King St. Do not suspect that I was not growing fond of him. He crooked his elbow and bid me hold steady his ancient arm as I stepped around the banjo busker who was masquerading today as an elderly homeless man. He raised his arm in greeting before remembering that he was in disguise.

 
Dear Robert Tuckwell I have inadvertently made a dent in the pristine cover of one of your former books and for this I am sorry. I suppose it would be more accurate to say that I have inadvertently made a dent in a book that was formerly yours. The endpages are elephant grey, inside there are pictures of white grand pianos in Uruguay, hammocks hung from trees in the British West Indies, and a bookcase on Providenciales Island. It is possible that you live on a street named after toothpaste or a formerly more popular word for noble wolf but I have not sent this letter to alarm you. It seems that you are alive. I hope that you are well and do not spend your afternoons as I do gazing at pictures of grand pianos and googling the imaginary dead.

It is best if I tell you immediately that Baudrillard has nothing to do with anything.

There seemed to be hundreds of books in the bookshop bearing the forthright blue felt-tip marks of your name. The man behind the cash register says that your books filled the entire back room of the bookshop when they first came in. I told him my theory that you had died or moved to New York but he was more in favour of a retirement story, I think that he forgot to tell me that he imagined you making room in your shelves for books about landmines and sailing. I am not quite sure what retired men do.

I found your work on the Internet. It would be better if I used words for this part.

An art museum made out of pink, white and yellow paper run through with shadows cast by a miniature artificial sun. I walked the walls and ceilings until I understood the gravity of the imagined. If I mapped and reduced the trails I leave as I cross and cross this city their bleached and condensed shape might resemble the museum as seen from above. I have maps that will answer your questions. I am not known for my ability to imagine architects or the possibility of confining and redefining matter into space. You have forced mastery over things such as bricks, sand and sunlight. I understand this is something they teach in universities. My desk lies in artificial shadow, light blocked by a drawing and the direction to lay bricks, uproot trees and lock panes of glass in channels made of wood. I might once have thought the word homemaker was something of an insult or a self-remedy for failure. This has revealed more than it should.

Dear Robert Tuckwell I am sorry if a report of your imagined death has disturbed you. It was my intention to convey more joy at the discovery of your life and to compliment your skills in wielding pens and folding paper. Such things should be more than ephemera. I imagine that your hands are steady as a surgeon’s and that you have one room dedicated to thinking only about light.

Yours sincerely,

DS

No call no show or dawn raising revolution without the need for a change of clothes

I'm taking this day prisoner, without consent. So much bound in the idea of asking, lunging only after a tipping downwards of the chin before raising it up again. I have grown weary with always waiting, harvesting courage with stupid intent for the asking. I will sit here in these pants and do as I will without wonder at the turning of courage into invasion. In the same way I'll take all the new kinds of acquired wisdom about toothpaste and the stupid kind of love being nonetheless a kind of love and run with them and three of my best pairs of scissors.