Pages From the Musical Journal Issue Five
Ted Waldbilig
Undergraduate/English
David Bowie: “Heroes” (1977 LP)
May 2008 - (Excerpt) …If that absolutely won't do it, then here: Two tracks in, you reach title track "Heroes," and find it impossible not to love. The yearning of the last minute or two is enough to make returning to the song over and over like recalling the mistake of not getting more out of high school.
Ultimately, "Heroes" is the more lovable and accessible younger brother of Low. As with any sibling duo, one is inextricably woven in with the other, though there is inevitable rivalry. Bowie had officially reached his second peak; the mirror reflection of what had happened earlier in the decade, but now distorted, artier and with a hunk of khat in the cheek instead of just a tongue.
Kanye West: 808s & Heartbreak (2008 LP)
22 May 2008 - CRAZY ROBOTS GO WILD IN CALIFORNIA (article from “The Great Beyond” nature blog; http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond)
“Swiss inventors have unveiled an amazing jumping robot, which they claim could explore inaccessible areas on other planets or help rescue missions here on Earth. Inspired by the grasshopper, the 7 gram robot can jump 27 times its body size, 1.4 meters.
“This biomimetic form of jumping is unique because it allows micro-robots to travel over many types of rough terrain where no other walking or wheeled robot could go,” says Dario Floreano, of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne. “These tiny jumping robots could be fitted with solar cells to recharge between jumps and deployed in swarms for extended exploration of remote areas on Earth or on other planets.”
A tiny battery powers an equally tiny motor that tensions springs. These then power the robot’s jumps. The robot, which appears not to be named at the moment, is being presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation today in Pasadena.
Steven Floyd, from Carnegie Mellon University, and colleagues are developing a robot that can run on water:
The water runner robot is designed to run on the surface of water in a manner similar to the basilisk lizard. To do so, it must generate a lift force greater than its weight by slapping and stroking its foot through the water, creating an air cavity in the process. In addition, it must remove its foot before this cavity collapses.
At the conference he’s talking about the problems with getting its feet right.”
Want a robot that interacts with people? You got it. The Internet even has a video of the thing. It’s a miniature robot that can “autonomously position electrodes in cortical tissue for isolation and tracking of extracellular signals of individual neurons." In other words: it has the ability to suck out any lyrical and vocal talents a musical artist had previously and replace it with gimmick crap.
Wavves/Windsurf: Friends Were Gone / Vapour Trails (2009 Single)
22 April 2009 - Get it while it's hot. What's up with "Vapour Trails"? This recording is a lego and a duplo.
24 April 2009 - Up all night. And I feel good. It's eighty degrees for the first time this year! When you look into the distance, you can make out a significant haze like we're in SoCo. The oatmeal even seems hotter!
Wavves have hit their career high it seems with "Friends Were Gone.” The simple, doo-wop-copying electrics feel more invigorating than anything off the eponymous Wavvves (just kidding! All the LPs are eponymous with more v’s added). The band definitely has their niche, and they dig into it further here. Too bad it won't last for another LP.
Time to get creative, Nathan.
27 April 2009 - Windsurf’s “Vapour Trails,” the b-side to Wavves’ free “Friends Were Gone” 7-inch is like going to a harsh noise rave where Phil Collins closes the evening for some reason.
Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding (1967 LP)
21 May 2009 - He totally alienated his fans with this one! Gosh!
The Microphones: Mount Eerie (2003 LP)
14 June 2009 - A re-occuring dream of mine is how I'll be driving the belt-line - except it's really exaggerated, 7 lanes wide or something - in Madison, WI.
I'm out of control and the car is sliding sideways as I try to negotiate the speed to no avail. A woman is with me and she's pregnant, perhaps about to give birth (?)
When the car finally halts, we're at an airport in Japan. This woman and I are trying to fly home. I ask for help, but - though the employees appear to speak English - they won't help or respond. No passers-by will, either.
The woman is in severe condition. Of course, time is of the essence.
We get desperate, as I begin to scream at everyone in the facility.
But no one will help.
After what seems like thirteen layovers, we eventually escape. It turns out the airport hub is an acting school; all of the people... acting students.
In my waking state, I deduce that people wouldn't help because they thought we were merely acting.
...We were damn good actors, too.
25 August 2009 - Who DOESN'T die halfway through an album?
2 September 2009 - So what happens now?
We can only compartmentalize things when we exist outside of them; we can reduce "senior year" to a singularity before it occurs.
A new semester is beginning and it seemed like one solid unit up until now; like all the classes were a chunk. But we know that's impossible, because in hindsight none of your semesters or years look like that.
They look out-of-focus and full of an infinite number of moments.
The Microphones' (Phil Elverum's) final LP Mount Eerie is a suite of experimental folk music full of tension, beauty, silence, drums, and siren (i.e. mermaids)... (just kidding, I mean the noisemaker).
It has a simplistic sleeve cover and just one story. It's about Phil Elverum facing himself on Mount Erie when he was a young man running away
and this is the most important part, because we all know what it's like to be running away; to be afraid and alone.
Accordingly, the music - and this is indeed music - arches high and swoops low fairly rapidly, removing the weight from your viscera and dangling you upside down from your spinal cord.
I. "See me scramble up the mountain away"
II. "Wake up in mist next to river"
III. "I know you're out there"
IV. "How many times have I died up here?"
V. "I'm on an outcropping boulder overlooking the harbor"
VI. "Some dudes come in all nasty and take over the show (big black death)"
VII. "A rainstorm quietly approaches before it clanggs upon the tin roof. The leaves move around out of discomforted joy. Elverum finally disappears.
I don't know. That's just what I got from listening to it while feeling around in my bed for the forty-one some minutes.
5 September 2009 - It's not far-fetched to run from "big black death," as Phil does for most of Mount Eerie. But it's a wonder that he finally arrives at a location not necessarily still, but rather final. At least it's protected from death, since it's already final.
No, it's not a stretch at all to be safe from death at a final/terminal location - but what kind of place would qualify as terminal? I would hope it wouldn't be a trap, anyway.
It reminds me of that dream in June. The one about the airport-acting-school. That woman and I were safe there, after the car accident, but there were so many possibilities that I was freaking out... I couldn't figure out what to do with all of this new territory unfamiliar; I was no birth giver's caretaker and no salaryman (sarariman) commuting.
I was sitting up against a pillar in the middle of a busy terminal, learning lessons the hard way without being in any real danger; and it wasn't dangerous not only because it was just a bad dream, but also because the whole airport was a farce. And we all know that's a statement of general truth.
6 September 2009 - >EXCERPT 13 MAY 2009<br><br>
(Space) - Two years ago I realized
that no matter how many times you hit the delete key
you cannot erase a storm column,
or a bustling mainstreet of all trucks and no people,
or a mood of salty salty clams away. And so keep typing
until something actually sad happens
and then start a new paragraph
without any indentation.
>END EXCERPT>
A mountain is a mountain, and giant though it be
it will see you returning to suffer its challenges again
gladly. Go to it.