orbis quintus

The friend who introduced me to the music of Will Oldham, John Darnielle, Vic Chesnutt, Neutral Milk Hotel, Thinking Fellers, and a host of others has died in the past few days. I just found out. It’s extremely hard to eulogize her, as she was one of the most complex, conflicted people that i’ve ever known. I have been working on a post for a few days now, about certain music i think of as 3 AM music. It has been odd, as i don’t think about writing about the actual music much anymore, preferring just to toss up a few songs, and let them speak for themselves. All of this stuff i acquired through tapes that Jennifer copied from her various boyfriends. When all the bars had closed, and all of my friends had gone home, i’d stay in my truck for hours afterwards, writing letters by the light of the tape deck in dark parking lots. Jen wrote more interesting letters than i did. They were peculiar works of art, admittedly some of it stolen, but much of it her own, bizarre confessionals with disturbing consequences. Gradually i managed to divorce her identity from this music, making it my own, but i’ve never stopped thinking about these artists as a genre all their own. She deserved a better life than the one that she had.

Vic Chesnutt “Dodge”

The Mountain Goats “Family Happiness”

Neutral Milk Hotel “Three Peaches”

Palace Brothers “You Will Miss Me When I Burn”

This is awkward, but once upon a time, these were four of her very favorite songs. There are certain things about them that make them biographical, but there are also significant fragments that make me have deep misgivings about the accuracy of each one. A couple of them were false enough to induce outrage. Nevertheless, these were once her favorites.

Eschaton pointed to Steve Gilliard, who points to a Boston Globe article. It’s about forced labor, which Gilliard points out is a war crime. This is insane hubris, and he has better points than i could make. However, i do want to add that this paragraph disturbs me:

Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned.

Doesn’t this seem a little extreme? Yeah, yeah, there are dangerous insurgents about. Blah, blah, blah. In case anyone forgot, these people are citizens of Iraq. We invaded their country. Now every person is to be treated like a potential criminal? Isn’t this provoking Iraqis to ask the question, “If i am to be treated as a criminal, why not act as a criminal?” We don’t have enough people there to keep the peace. Who’s going to use this database? The secret police?

The other spooky thing about this is that the neocons kept boasting about how Iraq is their sandbox for all kinds of freemarket ideas that they intend to initiate throughout the world. That’s been a bust. Now they are testing their other ideas, apparently security ones. It’s only a matter of time before mandatory DNA testing and retina scans will be brought to the U.S. Everyone can already see this, but it’s still unnerving to see how it’s happening, eroding rights through scare tactics of child abduction and terrorist attacks.

The bookstore sells the Bush Cards at one of the registers. Almost every customer picks them up, but no one ever buys them. It seems that no one quite knows what to make of them, even though it’s labelled ‘Carefully Stacked Deck’, so rarely does anyone ever buy them. Yesterday, a leathery skinned, frizzy bleached white blonde, frogvoiced biker chick in her forties picked them up, cast a gimlet eye on them, and laughed hoarsely, har har har… “It looks likes they’s gonna have to print themselves up a new deck now that all those bastards quit!”

Fuck it. I guess you had to be there.

Listened to that upcoming Mercury Rev album The Secret Migration again. Ehhhhh….. Is Grasshopper still in the band? He needs to do another solo album, and remember how to make some noise. The Orbit of Eternal Grace was far, far from a perfect album, but this is a side of Mercury Rev that seems to have been bled away into the ether. 1998 didn’t even seem like that long ago, but six years is forever musically.

Grasshopper & the Golden Crickets “Silver Balloons”

Grasshopper & the Golden Crickets “O-Ring (Baby Talk)”

Grasshopper & the Golden Crickets “Univac Bug Track”