rebeccakuder

How to get through winter

The leaves are mostly gone from the deciduous trees around our house, many of them stuffed in the gutter. (Have to do something about that.) It’s still sometimes warm enough to hike with only a sweatshirt, but that’s one of the false, temporary good things about climate change.

But the temperature can’t fool me–it’s almost winter.

This morning, my husband put on a CD by Ulaan Kohl, one of the incarnations of Steven R. Smith. (Smith is also responsible for Hala Strana.) Perfect choice. For me, fallintowinter is the season of Dead Can Dance and Hala Strana. I love the introspection and moroseness in this music; it’s so clashingly rich. Along with warm sweaters, extra cocoa, and stout beer, music like this weaves the tapestry I can hang on through winter.

In my house, there’s an imagined scenario. It goes a little something like this: At a family reunion, or holiday party, Lisa Gerrard‘s aged auntie says to her, “Lisa, can’t you write something a little more upbeat? You know, for the kids?” Lisa just looks at her.

These people will also be invited to teach in the department of Interdisciplinary Aesthetics. But only in winter.

rebeccakuder

The maul (oops, I mean mall)

I went to the mall today.

I rarely go to the mall. Generally, I shop in Yellow Springs. When there are things I need to get that are either unavailable or too expensive near home, I go to Goodwill or Target. Sometimes I go to TJ Maxx. I also shop online, but sometimes you need to try things on, see how they fit. Overall, I dislike buying things that are new, unless it’s a matter of necessity or hygiene.

Today it was something unavailable at the other places that propelled me toward the mall. Okay, it was lingerie. (I read on Kate Gale’s blog that if you blog about lingerie, people will find your blog. There, I’ve done it. We’ll see what happens.)

Everywhere I went, Christmas music blasted into my interior, crowding my thoughts with insipidity such as “Let it snow.” (My most hated holiday song, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year” thankfully wasn’t on the playlist.)

At the mall, I saw people who looked like they had been ripped from the headlines of reality TV shows. One young woman, not only in attire, resembled Paris Hilton. As I walked by, she glanced up from her text message but didn’t seem to see me. It could have been the vacancy behind her eyes, or the fact that I wasn’t wearing makeup that called my existence into question. (When I pass makeup counters, I always feel invisible. I’ve never worn much makeup, and I usually sense condescension from the sales representatives, an almost imperceivable shaking of their heads, as if they’re thinking, “That poor girl, doesn’t she know that a little concealor goes a long way?”)

Being at the mall was stressful and depressing. If I were a more anxious, less happy person, I think it would make me want to drive out of the parking lot and right over a cliff. The mall tossed me back to being fifteen, that horrid yearning for nothing to get between me and my Calvins–back when Calvin Klein jeans were still a status symbol. Every teenage trip to the mall made me feel fat. Never mind that now I’m forty-three, in good shape, and I truly don’t care that I wear second-hand clothing most of the time. Walking through those fake-fancy halls today, the whoosh of air that disappeared from my inner strength was tangible.

Despite my alarm and nausea, I tried things on, found a couple of things I truly needed, got a “cashew chocolate bear” (something like a turtle, but about the size of a small wallet) and ate it on my quick walk back to the car.

Then I turned on NPR, and started home, back into my safe zone, where commentators talk about smart or interesting aspects of mall culture, but I never, ever have to step into one.

rebeccakuder

Dead motorcycle in the Clifton Gorge

On a recent walk in the luscious state park across the road from where I live, I saw something odd in the water below. I had just gotten new glasses, my first pair of bifocals, and so I was already disoriented, trying to find what the optometrist called the “sweet spot” and simply focus on what I was regarding. I found it.

The thing below, which doesn’t quite come across so well in this photo, is a motorcycle.

It’s just down there. Based on the patina, it seems more like detritus than a recent accident or disposal of really large trash. Like it must have come from a junk yard upstream somewhere.

So if you live upstream and just realized your motorcycle is missing, you might want to stop by.

rebeccakuder

Missing the Asylum Street Spankers! DANG!

DANG!

The Asylum Street Spankers usually play in Dayton at the intimate, excellent Canal Street Tavern the night after Thanksgiving. Before I had a baby, my husband and I would generally go see them. But this year they are playing the week before Thanksgiving, which is tomorrow night, and I just found out today, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to go anyway, but DANG! They are such a raucous, good time to see, so DANG, DANG, I say… if you’re in Dayton and want a sure thing, go see them.

I bet that this guy Nathan, who seems to turn up at their Canal Street Tavern shows, will be there. He always gets spanked. It’s a thing. Last time he completely dropped his pants. I think he was kinda drunk.

Tomorrow night, Christina Marrs will say, “Is Nathan here?” and he will be, and I won’t be. DANG!

rebeccakuder

On “the fantastika”

I just read an interview with Serbian writer, Zoran Zivkovic posted on SF Signal. In particular, I love the distinction he makes between genre fiction and “the fantastika” the which is excerpted here:

SF SIGNAL: “I read in an interview that you consider yourself a writer “without any prefixes.” Why do you think some readers, critics, and other writers have biases against fiction that are typically labeled as genre or might include elements of the fantastika?”

ZIVKOVIC: “These are two very different things. The fantastika is a noble and ancient art. (A much broader term, by the way, than “fantasy.”) According to some studies in literary history, about 70 percent of everything that has ever been written in the last 5,000 years, ever since literacy came about, belongs to one of many forms of the fantastika. Some readers might not like it, that’s quite legitimate, but I don’t see how any serious critic could have biases against it. This would mean denying that the vast majority of the world literary heritage has any value. As for genre fiction, it refers to products of the contemporary publishing industry. Since any industry is primarily about making a profit, it’s no wonder that their products don’t have much art; art by its very nature does not go along with popularity. And only popularity, mass readership, paves the way to profit. Alas, the more popular usually means the more trivial, less artistic.”

There’s so much importance placed on the boxes where writing is published…and so much distain for the genre ghettos, that it’s refreshing to be reminded of the long traditions that existed before Barnes and Nobel needed simple shelving instructions.

rebeccakuder

Interdisciplinary Aesthetics

“Interdisciplinary Aesthetics”

I thought I came up with this term the other day, but alas, a quick google reveals I cannot claim it.

Interdisciplinary Aesthetics. I thought, “This should be an academic field!” In my dream department, the teachers would be people like Joy Williams, Joss Whedon, Lynda Barry, Dave Chappelle, Tom Waits, the guys from Sleepybird, the creators of “Mad Men” and “Nip/Tuck” and “Deadwood” and whoever thought up that “Think Different” campaign for Apple computer. And lots of other people who seem to get that the disciplines of 2-D and 3-D art and literature and theatre and music seep into each other and can and should collaborate on a cellular level.  (6/15/12: I’m adding Jon Langford and anyone else he wants to bring to the guest list.)

We could have some scientists and other thinkers, too. I’m sure there are plenty of others who should apply when we open the department.

In those halls, you would find painters and writers and quiltmakers and dancers and drum-bangers and all kinds of rowdy, quiet, thoughtful, brilliant people. And maybe even some people who use (gasp!) computers as the primary medium.

Maybe we should pool our resources and everybody move to Denmark.

Discuss…

rebeccakuder

Sleepybird: a major inspiration

(Watch, she’s writing about music again…)

There’s a really great band in Dayton (yes, it’s true) called Sleepybird. They are hard to categorize, and it’s best to see them live. Here are some things you should know about them:

1) The band includes rock staples like guitar, keyboards, and drums, but also trombone, upright base, and one of the coolest and most magical instruments I have ever encountered, a theramin.
2) While a lot of their songs ruminate upon the sinister, twisted, leftover crumbs of love, there is something (maybe in the music itself) that buoys, so despite the sometimes-cynical lyrics, you can feel the lift, the optimism in the song.
3) The Wigglebird turns up at a lot of their shows. You can sometimes catch plays and videos featuring the Wigglebird, including their collaboration with Zoot Theatre, “The Flight of the Wigglebird.”

A disclaimer: Nick Tertel, front man and songwriter, is a friend of mine. My husband and I first saw Sleepybird play at a mutual friend’s new year’s party. In the living room. There were kids running around, and maybe a dozen adults there to listen, and almost as many people in the band. They started playing, and the sound spun out in tendrils, rich and buttery, so different from anything I had heard before. Later on, we stood around outside by a fire, embers flying in the wind, strangely balmy for the change of the year in Ohio. We talked to Nick and his wife, Donna, and they were nice and cool and soon we were becoming friends.

That night, as 2006 opened into 2007, was a transformation of sorts, helping me step onto a path that I wasn’t sure I would go down. I could not know then that Merida would be born in December of that new year.

Another great moment of watching Sleepybird and Wigglebird…at the Cannery on March 2, 2007.

One thing I love about Sleepybird is how they bloom from within the world of art, interconnected, connecting, so that music and theatre and puppetry and paintings mush over into each other, and soon, the room is ringed with origami cranes, flying down toward you, letting you know that it’s all or all about to be beautiful, and strange, and for me, it warms the inner parts of the human who is watching, and listening.

rebeccakuder

Writing really bad stuff

If you want to write, you have to write some really bad stuff first. You have to sit down, get out paper or computer and put one word in front of the other, like walking, and if you’re lucky, it can be as unthinking, un-thought about, as walking…for stepping is something most adults who can walk rarely examine.

Gets you from one place to another.

While you’re getting from one place to another, the awful part is to be thinking, “This is all crap; I can’t believe how bad this is,” but that’s part of how to make things.

The stuff has to exist in its crap-like state before you can make it better.

I read once that Joy Williams rarely revises her work; it just comes out brilliantly. Lucky her! The rest of us just have to write lots of crap. I guess it’s good to be writing at all, even if it’s crap.

You have to keep knocking on that dark door…

rebeccakuder

To go skating on your name

158439I had a very interesting piece of news today that I can’t share yet, but will post here when I can. In looking for the proper celebratory music, Tom Waits’ Alice gleamed from the shelf, perfect. On it went.

(It will come as no surprise to you that I love that album.)

So many of these songs transport me to a sweet, innocent, clangy, maybe steampunky time, somewhere not quite here, but close. The title song tickles the edge of myself: letters, words, and meaning combining into a circling cut, through something frozen:

It’s dreamy weather we’re on
You wave your crooked wand
Along an icy pond
With a frozen moon
A murder of silhouette crows I saw
And the tears on my face
And the skates on the pond
They spell Alice

I’ll disappear in your name
But you must wait for me
Somewhere across the sea
There’s a wreck of a ship
Your hair is like meadow grass
On the tide
And the raindrops on my window
And the ice in my drink
Baby, all that I can think of
Is Alice

Arithmetic, Arithmetock
I turn the hands back on the clock
How does the ocean rock the boat
How did the razor find my throat
The only strings that hold me here
Are tangled up around the pier

And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I’m dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I’m lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice

And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I’m dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I’m lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice

That end bit, “And I must be insane/To go skating on your name/And by tracing it twice/I fell through the ice/Of Alice,” eluded me for a long time. Finally I realized that “the ice of Alice” meant the letters of the word…

But what’s really on my mind is “Kommienezuepadt.” Watch this weird little video of on youtube: “Kommienezuspadt.”

(Pretend German)
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt

Sei punktlich
Sei punktlich
Sei punktlich

Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt
And we can’t be late
And we can’t be late

(Pretend German)
And we can’t be late
Kommiene, Kommiene
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt

(Pretend German)
And we can’t be late
And we can’t be late
And we can’t be late
And we can’t be late
Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt

Sei punktlich
Sei punktlich
Sei punktlich

Kommienezuspadt
Kommienezuspadt

Ha, ha, ha, ha
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
Ha, ha, ha, ha
Kommienezuspadt

(Pretend German)
And we can’t be late
And we can’t be late
And we can’t be late
Sei punktlich
Sei punktlich
Kommienezuspadt
Kommiene, kommiene, kommiene, kommiene
Kommienezuspadt

Soon as I can, I’ll say more.

rebeccakuder

I can smell it now…

My beautiful, brilliant friend Elaine Gale wrote this article for the Sacramento Bee about where some of their local coffee comes from…and the labor involved…here’s a sip:

Chaves wants consumers to know that every bean you drink comes from a timeline equivalent to the birth of a child: nine months from blooming to picking.

I am so glad to have a great local roasting company, Brother Bear’s Coffee, in Yellow Springs. Otherwise I would have to move out to Sacramento and shack up with Elaine, which, come to think of it, might be kind of fun.