The Big Swift

I've been contemplating Taylor Swift to-day. Every now and then, I feel I must make some gesture of connecting with the modern world. So I thought I'd give my attention to this new young sensation. Well, I guess her first album was almost twenty years ago now but that's new in my book.

Seriously, though, I haven't been totally ignorant of Taylor Swift all this time. I used to hear her music when I worked at JC Penney. Spending so much time at the mall did help me soak up some modern music. Dedicating some time to her works this morning, I was really more surprised by the songs I hadn't heard. I'd never heard "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", "Anti-Hero", "Bad Blood", and others. I heard "Style" and "Blank Space" over and over again at JC Penney. "Blank Space" is my favourite.

She seems to have a reputation for "confessional" songs but "Blank Space" seems like the direct opposite of that. It's like a synopsis for an episode of Dynasty. It's bigger than life, pulpy, and neat as a confection. Its lyrics snap together as tidily as the frosting on a birthday cake, embellished by the sprinkle or gumdrop here and there of a clicking pen sound effect and coiling turn of vocal tone. It's fetishistic, a lot of her songs and videos are, though never really kinky. She's more Batgirl than Catwoman. It works because she's intensely pretty. Her face has the mathematical proportions of a face generated by computer from data on effectively attractive attributes.

Then there are some songs that do seem like they may be confessional, the best by far being "Anti-Hero".

I'm impressed to see she actually directed this video and did a decent job. Her shifting size recalls how Alice's changing size originally functioned in Lewis Carroll's books, as a reflection of emotional state and perceived position in society. The video stops for a funeral skit that's funny but goes on just slightly too long.

I'm still not sure if the song is truly confessional or just less pulpy. The lyrics also recall Alice in Wonderland:

It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me
At tea time, everybody agrees
I'll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror
It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero

Whether or not it's actually Swift's psyche on display, she paints an insightful, psychological picture.

She also has a number of revenge anthems of which "Shake It Off" is the best. There's one called "Bad Blood" with such a god awful music video I felt embarrassed for her despite its millions of views (and likely millions in revenue). It apes Taratino but with terrible cgi and choreography and an endless conveyor belt of cameos from celebrities who all look weirdly uncomfortable, like they're only there because they didn't know how to say no.

Mainly, though, it was a pleasant excursion into the present, watching Taylor Swift videos.

The Answers to the Questions

This is my favourite so far, both song and video, from Chrystabell and David Lynch's new album, "Cellophane Memories". I love how subtle the video is. Lynch doesn't direct the viewer to any of the almost imperceptible changes that occur, your own eye is responsible for whether you're watching Chrystabell in the see-through dress or the little man with half a face caught in mid-motion.

Like the previous songs, there's a siren's call quality to it. Chrystabell seems not so much to be a definite woman but a dreamt of ideal or manifestation of fundamental, irrepressible desire. The man with the fractured face is almost indistinguishable from his environment. One indefinite being dreams of another. The sense of sorrow and urgency underlying it all imbues these clouds with anxiety parallel to the weird sedative quality. It's lovely.

It reminds me of "Ghost of Love", Lynch's song from the Inland Empire soundtrack, especially with that guitar and percussion.

Relentless Love

So that's the new thing David Lynch released this week, which he teased last week. I knew it wouldn't be Twin Peaks related. I kind of hoped it would be a movie announcement. But I'm not surprised it's not.

It's been a long time since he and Chrystabell released a collaboration. I believe this is the first time he's actually shot one of her music videos for a song he's written for her. This song kind of reminds me of "The Voice of Love" from the Fire Walk with Me soundtrack except a little creepier. That makes sense; eternal love would be both creepy and comforting.

"Sublime Eternal Love" is going to be on an album called Cellophane Memories to be released on August 2.

My favourite Chrysabell and David Lynch collaboration (not counting Twin Peaks: The Return) remains "All the Things":

Shane MacGowan

Shane MacGowan died on Thursday. I'd been feeling grim for several days and it kind of seemed like everyone was. MacGowan's death sort of blends in with it, which yet makes it stand out more. Everyone has kind of expected MacGowan to die any day for the past forty years. The hard drinking singer who never seemed to care much whether he lived or died had all the marks of it in his manner and infamously bad teeth.

Just last year, an interview at The Guardian with MacGowan began, "MacGowan has not talked to a British newspaper for 10 years and there is so much to ask him, not least how he is still alive." And now he's not and it's not such a mystery. Why does that make it hurt more? When he lived, it was an interesting rebuke to all apparent evidence. Now he's dead, it's just ugly grey, dull normalcy. It's the inexorably fulfilled prophecy in his lyrics about being beaten, starved, and abused.

I often find myself whistling "Dirty Old Town" in recent years, a song I first heard in a rendition by The Pogues, MacGowan's band. The town I live in, Kashihara, seems to suit the song with its factories, canals, battered old buildings, and, despite the famous Japanese obsession with cleanliness, plenty of dirt, with many buildings bearing streaks of black mould and rust.

I suppose it's fitting that MacGowan died at the start of a Christmas season since his most famous song, ironically, is a Christmas song. Just last year the song, "Fairytale of New York", was featured on no less mainstream a platform as The Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special.

It's kind of fucked up there's a Michael Buble ad at the end of that video right now, especially since it's the uncensored version of the song.

Shane MacGowan was 65 when he died. He collaborated with many other great musicians in his time. He performed as part of Nick Cave's ensemble arrangement of Bob Dylan's "Death is Not the End", which seems as appropriate a note to end on as any:

Languages of Dream

Last night I dreamt I was at Grossmont College in San Diego, the community college I went to before SDSU. I was in a little garden and I found a shaggy grey cat under a shrub, in a drain pipe. There was also a kitten but the kitten was exactly like the adult cat. That is, a scale miniature, with the head in the same proportion to its body as the adult cat. But the fur couldn't scale so it looked like solid, moulded plastic. It was kind of a pale plum colour instead of grey.

I've been remembering my dreams a lot lately after a very long period when I was forgetting them. The night before last, I dreamt the new Doctor Who episode was written by someone who wanted to skewer the Church of England but knew absolutely nothing about it. So in the story, Rose had a part time job as a bishop down at the local church. She had to wear black robes every day and her coworkers called her lazy even when she was working hard.

Here's a pretty music video one of my students recommended:

One of the most striking things to me about K-Pop is often the lyrics include English. It's a reflection of how much stronger South Korea is in English than Japan. Japan just recently ranked shockingly low again in English education. Usually when I ask teachers for their opinions as to why, they say Japan focuses too much on testing--that is, memorising grammar and vocabulary instead of practicing conversations and role playing. I would say that's part of it. English is kind of studied like a dead language and the rules are much stricter to be more conducive to memorisation. Yesterday, I was talking to a teacher who was stressing the importance of differentiating "shrine" and "temple". In Japan, Shinto structures are called shrines and Buddhist structures are called temples. It's useless for me to point out that actual English is far less strict and the words "shrine" and "temple" are applied to all sorts of things, well beyond the spheres of Shinto and Buddhism.

Mostly, there's just a pure lack of interest in truly learning English in Japan. You'll hear the occasional one or two lines of English in a J-Pop song--and quite often bad English. Meanwhile, in South Korea, pop artists are writing whole songs in perfectly intelligible English. There's a market for it and therefore an interest. I just don't see it in Japan.

Dreams and Music

Last night I dreamt I saved Ewan McGregor from a car accident. I think I was riding in the old red Aerostar my family had when I was a kid. We were on the freeway and it was flooding with muddy water flowing from behind us. Suddenly, a white sportscar raced through it, trying to get past us but it skidded sideways into a wall and stopped. Inside, I could see Ewan McGregor unconscious. I waded across the water and somehow managed to get his door open and lift his head above the rising water. He woke and wasn't grateful at all. He managed to get the car started and sped away. Movie stars!

I used to write about dreams all the time but haven't been remembering them lately. This week, I've been snacking before bed on some dark rye bread I made on Sunday and I've been remembering dreams every night. I also had a dream about going back to San Diego and somehow completely forgetting to bring the vests I usually wear these days.

Before bed last night, I found myself on another nostalgia trip, watching music videos from the '90s. Boy, music sure was good back then.

I was also in the mood for classic rock and found The Rolling Stones now have a pretty amazing official video for "Sympathy for the Devil".

X Sonnet #1789

The evening worms were blue to walk the dog.
She knew the meaning etched in fortune's check.
The scribbled night would pay the burning log.
What lovers hear across the evening deck.
Residing back before the denim wait.
Corrections crack the shield before the doll.
In triumph turtles take the bat for bait.
A billion clowns could fill the lurid mall.
Revolving tricks are nothing new again.
If boredom blanks the mind, the mirror soothes.
Entire buildings use her single pen.
The crickets' noises never stopped her moves.
The river rose for roads and rusty cars.
A plan was made to summon dreams to Mars.

Tony Bennett

I'm not exactly a fan of Tony Bennett, who passed away at the age of 96 on Friday. I don't hate him, though. I listen to the Goodfellas soundtrack a lot and "Rags to Riches" is a perfect opener for that movie.

I certainly have to respect Bennett's longevity. He was still releasing albums up until 2021 despite having Alzheimer's (which makes me wonder how much those albums were his idea). His voice certainly didn't diminish noticeably, not so as I can notice, anyway, in this duet with Lady Gaga:

Do you think Gaga wanted to go to bed with him? She looks like she's aggressively sending signals in the video. That could just be performance but I wouldn't be too sure about the girl who wore the meat dress. It would've been a feather in her cap, one that just went up in value, I guess.

I would say his voice seems to have more range than hers in this song. This is likely a deliberate choice by Gaga but it sure makes him look good. How many singers stop sounding right after they hit 70 or so? He really didn't sound much different than he did in 1949.

All Roads Lead to Television

I haven't written about my dreams in a while. Last night I dreamt I was back in San Diego, walking east on Fletcher Parkway in La Mesa. I was on the south side of the street though I knew I needed to be on the north side. I was carrying a glass mug I'd stolen from the trolley station (where one does not usually find mugs). I found my path, and the path of every car in the street, was impeded by a new concrete parking garage. Cars had to turn around and go back the other way. I went inside and found an entrance to JC Penney and a little waiting room for the department store's optometrist or photo studio. There was an old CRT television, old enough to have a wooden exterior. It was showing new movies.

Last night I watched a bunch of old music videos. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone feel this way about you? Or about anything?

Twitter Sonnet #1700

Ahead of silver cars, a horse advanced.
Bereft of gas, the final car desists.
Across the road, a nervous critter danced.
Delicious dots in space for some exist.
For kings, the birds could bow and scrape the seeds.
Effacing spirits move the dial down.
Replacement fluff has choked rewarded deeds.
Upholstery broke from rotten feather down.
Mistaken arms mislead the leaden leg.
Extinguished tombs contain the beat of death.
Expensive glue repaired the ugly egg.
On iron hills there sounds a banshee breath.
Beneath the teeth of auto parts they fall.
Returns are cut behind a diesel wall.

Angelo Badalamenti

Angelo Badalamenti passed away two days ago. Here's a man whose work has been a truly vital part of my life for thirty years. His work isn't just the music of my formative years. At different stages of my life, particularly his soundtracks for David Lynch movies and TV, his work took on new vitality and significance. We all have songs that take us back to certain points in our lives. But with Badalamenti's music, I can go back to my bedroom when I was in high school, to my college days, to driving late at night in the early 2000s, to the excitement around the Twin Peaks revival in 2017, to the seemingly solitary bright spot in a mad world Twin Peaks often seemed to be at that time. I could take it back to last year when I was showing Twin Peaks to students here in Japan.

Badalamenti did a lot more than collaborations with Lynch. He cowrote songs for the great Nina Simone early in his career:

I've always been fond of an arrangement of George and Ira Gershwin's "A Foggy Day" he did with David Bowie:

He composed scores for notable films like Nightmare on Elm Street 3 (the best of the franchise), City of Lost Children, and Secretary. But it is undeniably his work with Lynch that bore the most impressive fruit. His score for Blue Velvet is divine and luscious. His score for Mulholland Drive, in which he also acted in a brief role, is sad and eerie. In 2017, his contributions to Twin Peaks: The Return were limited, I always suspected due to health problems, but his work is a big part of the strange atmosphere of sorrow and mystery in this remarkable scene:

But if I had to pick a golden era of Badalamenti, I would say his best work spanned the time from the final episode of Twin Peaks season two through Fire Walk with Me and Lost Highway. The Fire Walk with Me soundtrack is just simply one of the greatest soundtracks ever recorded. Its movement through different tones, from foreboding melancholy with a hint of panic, through gentle affection, through frightening mania, is all part of a tapestry of nightmare. It was spellbinding when I first heard it in the '90s, it's spellbinding now.

A great artist is gone and his music will be with us forever. I'll see you in the trees.

Julee Cruise

The singer Julee Cruise passed away at the age of 65 on Thursday. She committed suicide after suffering from systemic lupus since 2018. It caused her constant pain.

My memories of her performances have varied associations and go back thirty years. For a lot of hardcore Twin Peaks fans, she's part of the soundtrack to our teenage years, that category which seems like the bedrock of a person's psyche. Her ethereal vocal style came from a sort of synthesised New Wave ambient rock best associated with Elisabeth Fraser, a singer whom Cruise's first collaboration with David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti self-consciously imitated. "Mysteries of Love", recorded for Lynch's Blue Velvet, had lyrics by Lynch and music by Badalamenti while Cruise performed vocals. It was a fruitful collaborative arrangement that helped give Twin Peaks its inimitable, unique style and tone.

Although she never had dialogue, Cruise was definitely more than just a singer onstage at the Roadhouse on Twin Peaks. Her facial expressions somehow tied directly into the drama in a way none of the other performers in the show's third season did.

I found myself thinking of conversations I had with various people throughout my life. People I loaned my CDs to who may not have even been familiar with Twin Peaks. Music has that peculiar way of getting associated with people and relationships but it's only the select few performers who become associated with different relationships and very different eras of our lives. She was definitely one.

What's the Pity, Precisely?

Among other the other problems it may cause, incest can spoil everyone's plans. John Ford's early 17th century play, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, shows the far-reaching effects of a brother and sister's decision to enter a sexual relationship. Lacking the depth of insight found in Shakespeare, Ford's play is nonetheless a stimulating thought experiment, an illustration of the dangers inherent in reordering nature according to one's own will and whim.

I sought out this play because of a song on David Bowie's Blackstar, his final album, called "'Tis a Pity She was a Whore". Although the lyrics bear little resemblance to the story of the play, it seems the title was meant as a reference to it. The lyrics of another song on the Bowie album, "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" bear more resemblance to the play.

I watched a 1980 BBC production starring Cherie Lunghi as well as several actors I recognised from Doctor Who, including Tim Pigott-Smith from Masque of Mandragara, Bernard Archard who played Professor Scarman in The Pyramids of Mars, and Colin Douglas who played the lighthouse keeper from Horror of Fang Rock. For no reason in particular, the setting and costumes place the action in mid-19th century England. The play was originally set in Italy--it was common in English plays of the time to illustrate moral depravity by setting their action in Catholic countries, particularly Italy and Spain, where clergy, like the friar in Romeo and Juliet, can be shown ushering the protagonists to their destruction.

In her introduction to the play in the Norton English Renaissance Drama, Katharine Eisaman Maus draws direct comparisons between Romeo and Juliet and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore in discussing the lovers' rash disregard for their society's expectations. There's a Friar in this play, too, though he does not approve of Giovanni's (Kenneth Cranham) passion for his sister, Annabella (Lunghi), when Giovanni confesses to him.

Since Giovanni has shown no interest in other women, his father despairs of the family line's survival, both in terms of flesh and finance, as he finds himself in desperate financial straits. So he's trying to marry his daughter, Annabella, off to the wealthy nobleman, Soranzo (Anthony Bate). So the loss of Annabella's virginity is a grave matter indeed, in both senses of the word "grave".

Meanwhile, Soranzo is trying to extricate himself from entanglement with his former mistress, Hippolita (Alison Fiske). In this matter, and in the trouble that results when he discovers Annabella is pregnant by another man, he employs his murderous Spanish servant, Vasques (Pigott-Smith).

In contrast to the patriarchal expectations and machinations of society, Eisaman Maus concludes her introduction by saying that one feels "nostalgic for Giovanni's reckless disregard of social laws." I can't say I agree with that. In the name of love, he irrevocably ruins his sister's life. Her father may have been desperate but he specifically says he wouldn't force Annabella to marry anyone she didn't want to. Who knows what would have happened if Giovanni hadn't broached the subject of incest with her? She may have eventually found a suitable match. Maybe not someone she felt great passion for but someone with whom she could have lived in relative contentment. Eisaman Maus makes a point of how both Annabella and Giovanni are inexperienced so she can't be entirely faulted for interpreting her own feelings for Giovanni so disastrously. The title of the play, spoken by an authority figure at the end, is likely meant to show up the exceeding harshness to women of society's judgement of such things, but on the other hand, it is a pity that it was so easy for Giovanni to have sex with her. He was wrong to propose the relationship but she was also wrong to agree to it.

Looked at in the light of nature versus society, it's easier to see the connexion between the play and Bowie's song. He sings about a sexual relationship with a woman that can't be more because of some kind of "war". Since war is a construct dependent on abstract human conceptions of territory and citizenship, it is a contrary force to purely physical love, part of a set of abstract forces that run contrary to human instinct. If you look at the song as part of an album generally about Bowie being on the verge of death, it may be part of a lament, a recognition of his own fatigue, that he must, even at this final stage of his life, adhere to a society's expectations that run contrary to his instincts or desires.

No Mere Mortal Can Resist . . .

One thing led to another and I ended up watching Michael Jackson's "Thriller" with a class of fifteen year-olds yesterday. I used to watch it over and over when I was a kid. I remember trying to get friends and neighbours to watch it with me so they could bask in how scary it was. None of them seemed to appreciate it. Yet it is from the supposed best selling album of all time.

I don't think a story needs a character you can identify with to be good but I suspect the love Michael seems to have for horror movies radiates from the song and video in a way I found satisfyingly relatable. He was at a point in his plastic surgery journey where he was still really handsome and charming. Seeing him tease his girlfriend about jump scares comes off as really sweet, certainly for many girls watching. That's one of the great things about beauty, it can elevate the ordinary.

It's still fascinating to watch him move. People can imitate his dance moves but no-one can really move like him. It's so quick and natural. It's like Bruce Lee but without the arrogance. You can see his heart in his smile or his demoniac grin.

Twitter Sonnet #1486

To finish sooner plucks the tardy quill.
To written wings the flight was given shape.
To make a foot's to nab a shoe to fill.
To drop a tail's to turn from monk to ape.
To choose a dream's to nail a track to space.
To go to bed's to shade the meaning late.
To summon ghosts about the road's to race.
To burn the key's to seal the only gate.
To pour the tea, descend the steaming spine.
To drink the blood, descry the drifting barque.
To catch the wind you mend the course's line.
To start the race you find the starting mark.
To speak the word you need a plot of land.
To listen close you need a savage band.

Some Musical Respite

I saw some kids playing with some small fireworks, or "hanabi", 花火--"flower fire"--on Saturday. It's a traditional summer activity in Japan. This was outside a curry restaurant where I went to help some kids study. There's another big test coming up this week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I talked to a girl yesterday who seemed exhausted as she told me that, after school, she was going first to cram school, then to supper, then to another cram school. There's no lack of effort on the part of these poor kids but people have still find themselves wondering why Japan lags behind other countries in English. I heard one guy opine that it was because Japan is too focused on testing. I think that may be true but it only scratches the surface. I think there's just a deeply ingrained belief that it's more important that things should be done a certain way than that they should be done at all. Which isn't necessarily as bad as it sounds--it can mean the ends don't justify the means.

Yesterday, I also listened to kids present their essays on songs they like. One girl from art club, who usually produces some of the more interesting, stranger drawings, shared this song:

The title means something like "The Saturated Summer". I suppose it's hardly a surprise so many of the songs the kids like are big, cathartic releases of emotion.

A lot of songs are from anime series and a lot of the songs sound like they're from anime series even if they aren't.

That one was released in February of this year and already has over 56 million views.

I was happy to see a few kids like the theme from the new Evangelion movie:

Twitter Sonnet #1455

The easy short was long and long again.
Discovered air rebounds led to blanks.
The golden collar marks the genie train.
A tiny flask replaced the lion tanks.
The spirits green and red were pale at dusk.
Beside the ghost a table fell and broke.
The em'rald bed's a merely fluffy husk.
Beyond the glass a guest has lately spoke.
Adventures hid in cases understood.
Revealing names were parsed in diff'rent tongues.
Authentic faces fell behind the wood.
The pulpit bow was climbed by knotted rungs.
Eternal mornings bring the lightning back.
In darkness, flowers cut the green and black.

Songs in English

And I watch music videos on YouTube. Last week I saw the new Billie Eilish video, which is a lot different from the last Billie Eilish video I wrote about:

I've been informed by various headlines that people are upset Eilish wants to show off her body and look glamorous after being known for looking rebelliously frumpy. Enough headlines have informed me of people's complaints to make me wonder if anyone's actually complaining at all. I'm certainly not. She seems to be channelling Jessica Rabbit with this video and song which basically seems to be a modern "Why Don't You Do Right?" The message conveyed is, "Look at these marvellous breasts you can't touch because you're a loser." And she has a team of girls with her seemingly cast for bust size to back her up. This video pleases me. I am pleased.

I've also been watching videos recommended to me by students, including the new video from BTS:

That video already has over 314 million views for something that's essentially New Kids on the Block all over again. It's not my cup of tea but I'm happy the students are pleased. What interests me is that the song is entirely English, possibly a reflection of the band's runaway success in the U.S. How often do American bands write songs in foreign languages when they become popular in other countries? I can't imagine Billie Eilish writing a song in Mandarin (though I have no idea if she's popular in China). The U.S. has been massively in debt to Japan and China for years but still, as I can obviously attest to, everyone's trying to speak English. I find myself wondering if the language has an intrinsic value. I'm aware of how differently thoughts are organised in Asian languages. Many assume that the continued proliferation of English is only a legacy of British and American tyranny but I'm not so sure. Maybe I'm biased because I love English so much.

Twitter Sonnet #1450

The cable nose retrieved the deepest sand.
And now the learning starts with noodle guns.
We built the arm to rightly end the hand.
Our masters baked the butter deep in buns.
The bottle saved a letter pack with sauce.
Remembered thoughts were wet with inky rain.
He changed a word when years promote a boss.
The restless crew was pink from daily strain.
Divided months became important seeds.
Referring noodle cups we ate the phone.
Behind the ducks we watched the gentle reeds.
Beneath the bark and leaves we find a bone.
The painted rope has slipped from colour space.
Behind the door there waits a stranger's face.

The Bad, the Ugly, and the Wholesome

Since I was a senior in high school, I've tended to regard Marilyn Manson fans as kind of the Trekkies of Goth. In the sense that Star Trek was a more commodified, mainstream version of harder sci-fi by the likes of Isaac Azimov or Harlan Ellison. Now I look back and feel mildly amused that I spent any time thinking about what "Goth" really was. It hardly seems to matter when, like most art/subcultural movements, there are so many vague boundary lines. Now, for Goth, all categories seem to be watered down into a distant memory, something safe for the picture frame, to borrow a line from an old Tori Amos song from when she was dangerous.

Society is so over dangerous. This morning I read this article about Marilyn Manson and the death of the "bad boy". The irony this article succinctly describes had occurred to me, too:

20 years after religious groups picketed Manson’s concerts and blamed him for the corruption of America’s youth, one millennial woman has accomplished what a million pearl-clutching warnings from the likes of the Parents' Television Council could not. In the weeks after Wood leveled her accusations, Manson was dropped; first by his label, then his agent. The new Creepshow TV series, for which he had already filmed an appearance, announced that his segment would be scrapped. The denunciations from fans-no-more are still rolling in.

He's officially too creepy for Creepshow.

I certainly don't agree that the "bad boy" is dead, though. The purpose of the bad boy has changed. He's no longer the sexy Satanic sage, here to lead you on a path of delicious mayhem. He's the fresh faced, heartbroken, Korean popstar, who only needs your love to be redeemed from a life of delinquency. The point of the bad boy is not to be delivered of stifling convention, it's to present the story of a misfit being saved. If he can be saved, so can you.

Being accused of sexual abuse has made Marilyn Manson the most interesting he's been in decades. His shock cache seemed to dissolve at the end of the 90s as atheism became more mainstream. The new religious faith that has emerged in recent years is in the accuser. If Manson were a truly devoted performance artist--regardless of whether or not he's guilty--he'd lean into this now. He'd confirm everything Wood says and probably claim he'd done much, much worse. Maybe if he were a younger man, he would. But now he's the man who kicked long-time collaborator Twiggy Ramirez out of his band because of allegations early in the MeToo movement.*

What's really changed? It's the same reason Death Metal is popular in Scandinavia and chipper Bollywood musicals are popular in India--the more economically secure your country is, the more willing you are to indulge in dangerous thoughts. The things that get called transgressive now--like The Last Jedi--are done in the name of justice and wholesomeness and everyone's as eager to disassociate themselves from mayhem for mayhem's sake as James Gunn is eager to disassociate himself from ten year old jokes about paedophilia. It's not safe to be triggery--and the best defence is the preemptive denial in the form of strident denunciation.

I'd lost interest in Marilyn Manson by my senior year but I did like him before that, I had his first three albums. The shift in my interest arose not so much because of a change in my moral perspective but because I became more interested in more complex art--I realised Trent Reznor was the real genius at around the same time my interest in Star Trek was being supplanted by David Lynch and Akira Kurosawa. It's not the loss of brash contrarians that distresses me as much as the loss of intellectual, nuanced art, which tends to get tossed out at the same time. Moral contrariness is bad, but at least it's click bait--intelligence takes time to process and has a tendency to be disappeared entirely before the good people inadvertently like something that may be interpreted as unwholesome.

Ennio Morricone

Yesterday one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of film composers, Ennio Morricone, passed away at the age of 91. He had a genius for melody and his experimentation with sound gave us the peculiar yet perfect vocals in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, the synthesiser paired with strings in The Thing, and the eerie electric guitar in my favourite of his scores, Once Upon a Time in the West.

People writing about Morricone are justly including The Mission and Once Upon a Time in America as among his finest scores. But I thought I'd make a list of some of his lesser known but also astounding works.

Navajo Joe

As with Once Upon a Time in the West, his Navajo Joe score impressively weaves seemingly discordant screams with a sharp, electric guitar driven melody.

The Great Silence

The great exercise in bitter cold, Morricone offers a light touch to capture the every day truth of Klaus Kinski's villain.

Theft is No Longer a Crime

Like parts of his scores for The Thing and Allongsanfan, Morricone predates Rasputina in being able to really rock with a cello, lending a carnal impulse to this economic satire.

Finally, I leave you with this beautiful, underappreciated song he composed for Django Unchained:

Twitter Sonnet #1370

The granite holds a swirling wind for keeps.
Untidy doors would clutter jambs and knobs.
Above the buildings Locust Woman leaps.
The corn exceeds the biggest bin of cobs.
The quicker pen consists of bolts and light.
Extended time consumed the cheaper watch.
The lines of song removed the will to fight.
Defining shades reduced the mental blotch.
A signal look imputes the word to mess.
Mistaken tools were broken down the side.
Restraint prevents a foreign, errant bless.
A flimsy bag contained a soapy tide.
The pistol barrel's scream attends a glow.
A silent flute remembers rivers flow.

Moz and Chainlessness

I wouldn't say I am Not a Dog on a Chain, Morrissey's new album, is his best though, oddly, looking over the lyrics to-day, I'm liking it better than I did listening to it. An essential part of Morrissey's music has always been a rumination on his own unattractiveness coexisting with unrequited longing. The paradox for much of his career has been that, as much as he sings about how unappealing he is, he's always had legions of fans wanting to fuck him. Now that many of his fans (though far less than certain media outlets insist) have been coaxed away by the increasingly clique-ish pressures of Internet politics, in a sense, Morrissey's message agrees with his reality for the first time. To some extent, I think the politics is the pretext for the inevitable abandonment of an aging star by its fandom, something Morrissey cannily presaged in his lyrics many times, going all the way back to The Smiths' "Rubber Ring". The final track on I am Not a Dog on a Chain, "My Hurling Days Are Done", finds its singer alone as usual only now, as he draws closer to the end of his life, he finds the additional sorrow of having no-one to share his experiences with:

But now my hurling days are done
And there is no one to tell and there's nowhere to run

I don't think Morrissey's had a really strong album since 2009's Years of Refusal largely because his expressions of need for physical love have become increasingly awkward--yet, I suspect this is a deliberate point. I'm often reminded of one of my favourite lyrics from "Seasick, Yet Still Docked", a song from his 1992 album Your Arsenal:

My love is as sharp as a needle in your eye
You must be such a fool to pass me by

In these two lines he shows how his apparent great need is exactly what makes him so repellent. So on I am Not a Dog on a Chain we have "Darling, I Hug a Pillow" with this supremely awkward chorus:

Why can't you give me some physical love?
Why can't you give me some physical love?
Everything else is in place, except physical love

Oou, la la. This is sure to woo a Cyberman. The song also involves, as the title suggests, the singer hugging a pillow in futile effort to subdue his loneliness. I wonder if Morrissey is referencing or is aware of the body pillows popular in Asian countries typically featuring prints of popular anime characters.

Otaku culture is certainly an appropriate subject for Morrissey especially as we have moved into an era where people are far less conflicted about the instinctive disdain they feel for unattractive men.

Given Morrissey's controversial political stances from the past few years, such as supporting For Britain, one would expect more pointedly political lyrics. For Britain, called "far right" by its detractors, is really more liberal given its position on civil and animal rights--the "far right" comes in only for its stance on Muslim immigrants to Britain (it's against) and general isolationism. I'm not intellectually lazy enough to say that cautioning against Islamic values entering British law is inherently Islamophobic but I don't agree with Morrissey's support of the group. Another annoying thing about modern Internet politics is the persistent need to remind people that just because I like someone's music doesn't mean I like everything about them. I've known there were things I didn't like about Morrissey as a person for decades, ever since I heard how he insulted Tori Amos back stage at a show--when she complimented his music, he'd replied saying essentially, how would you know what good music is? I'm a long time fan of Tori Amos though, it's true, her creative spark seems to have been extinguished for a very long time, it's still not a very nice thing to say to her. But, then, I like Richard Wagner, who was an anti-Semite. I like artists for their art, which is the only thing I can truly know about them. WHICH SHOULD BE FUCKING OBVIOUS.

But in terms of politics, mostly I am Not a Dog on a Chain paints with a very broad brush, with songs like "Knockabout World", which seems to be about the general pettiness of the media without taking any particular side or stance. "The Truth about Ruth" seems to be an oddly banal song about transgenderism--then as I looked at the lyrics to-day I started to think this is another one where what seemed a flaw is kind of the point. The song concludes:

Ruth is John
Ruth is John
And sooner or later
We are all calmed down.

"Ruth is John", the chorus, is a plodding chant, as though the point of this is, "We'd all hoped there'd be something more exciting about being trans."

The reason the pointed awkwardness of the lyrics is a little hard to catch is that there's nothing remotely awkward about Morrissey's voice or the music arrangement. Maybe this stuff made more sense in the 80s and 90s when The Smiths and Morrissey's early solo work deliberately paired insightful, credible lyrical portraits of youthful awkwardness with strange, experimental music and vocals. The strongest track on I am Not a Dog on a Chain is a smooth duet with Thelma Houston with enigmatic lyrics, "Bobby, Don't You Think They Know?"

Old Songs Offer Another Glimpse Over the Treetops

We've reached a time when songs that were once innocuous or liberal now express views many would consider dangerous or far right. This is the argument quietly made by Morrissey's new cover album, California Son, released yesterday to much frothing of mouths and gnashing of teeth by some of the most virulent Morrissey haters. Reading the reviews for the album has been more fascinating, though, for the ones that describe being perplexed by Morrissey's choices that seem self-evidently incongruous. This gave me hope. This, more than anything, confirms that Morrissey has achieved his goal; he's forced people to think.

Even many of the out and out negative reviews praise Morrissey's voice and he does sound fantastic, matching Roy Orbison pitch-for-pitch in a cover of "It's Over". Predictably, the The Guardian's short and snippy review denies the album is good even on a technical level. How can anyone really say Morrissey's crazy to think there are journalists with a grudge against him?

But over and over, from positive to mixed to negative, critics express confusion. What can it mean that the man who supports For Britain would cover Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan? "Morrissey’s Covers LP ‘California Son’ Shows Off His Golden Voice, Perplexing Politics" is the title of the Rolling Stone review. The Guardian reviewer says, "Quite why Morrissey has decided to record an album of protest-adjacent covers at this point in his career is unclear," despite chiding the singer for having a predilection for trolling.

Then there's the conflicted review at A.V. Club which can't understand why this purportedly right winged monster would so beautifully cover Bob Dylan's "Only a Pawn in their Game", the most brilliant choice on the album in terms of making a political statement. Anyone who denies the relevance of the song's lyrics to to-day's political arena is in a deep ideological trance.

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
"You got more than the blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you been born with white skin, " they explain
And the Negro's name
Is used, it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game

In these verses you can see shades of the right wing exploitation of poor whites in both the U.S. and Britain and you can see the left wing exploitation of identity politics. It's an extremely timely song, fitting in with a recurrent theme on the album, like in his cover of "Suffer the Little Children" by Buffie St. Marie, of socially systemic indoctrination.

The Bob Dylan song is about the assassination of the black civil rights activist Medgar Evers' by a racist white man. The Rolling Stone review even takes a swipe at Dylan's original, suggesting it "absolves the killer's racism". There's another point of view on how this song would make sense for Morrissey, though. For his views on halal animal killing and his support of For Britain he's been called anti-Islam despite his flat out denial of this and the fact that he's written songs like "I Will See You in Far Out Places" and "Asian Rut". Despite being closely associated with his home town of Manchester throughout his career, no-one seems to take into account how the 2017 suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester may have influenced his point of view. If you adapt the lyrics for the perspective of that assassin you can see that there are other ideologies that compel their human pawns to horrific acts. Which again fits with the album's theme of people misled by poorly reasoned philosophies but the point is that these killers are as human as anyone else. And if it was recorded by Morrissey with the Manchester killer in mind it's no more a criticism of Islam as a whole than the Dylan song was a criticism of Christianity or southern U.S. culture. Any listener who automatically draws the conclusion that it is reveals his or her own lazy thought processes.

And the album justifies the praise for its technical brilliance. Morrissey's voice is in top form.