frequency_dave

blind boy in the big city

[frequencydave]

Two Valuable Lessons

Night wind is howling put out on the side Occasional cars Pass by on the left Bushy brush is black Eyes are watching feet The moon is tooth-white. A hole in the sky Like an octopus darkness slithers out. At home the Father nods in his red chair

[frequencydave]

Lonesome Dawn

The Cowboy went walking through shadowy rust-red lunar landscapes. Desert wind invading his collar and rustling brown hair under brown hat.

What should I think about?

Tombstone rockfaces cordon off His night. Walls of stone carved by cyclopean glaciers long ago. The Cowboy

could almost See these bright

blue ice-ships plowing through the ghost ground that was once all around. Blue from ice to light

I can almost smell the sunrise.

[frequencydave]

Back When Every Night Was the Best Night of Our Lives

Slicked-back psychos at this party again Tile floors like a hospital and people taking medicine in the back. I know why I come to these things My best friend has bouncy brown curls and a blonde contempt that I can't explain and don't care to. The psychos carry guns we hear. Overhear. None of us know these gravediggers but we want to. This guy who changed my life and then died is bellowing into a mic and all the girls have mohawks and nowhere else to be. I pull out my pocketwatch and take a long drag The plume of Time that I blow out into the room sends me back Back to this bed on the floor. The absolute last place I want to be

[frequencydave]

Sabrina (Wilder, 1954)

Strange little picture. It has the trappings of a romantic comedy, but the central love triangle's brother vs brother dynamic and the complete and utter lack of chemistry between Hepburn and Bogie give the extremely funny movie a weird little edge. The titular Sabrina is the chauffer's daughter on a huge American estate. The family has two brothers, David the young playboy who Sabrina has an obsessive crush on, and Linus, the old fuddy duddy who runs all the businesses and is no nonsense, ya hear? When Sabrina returns from cooking school in Paris she's all hot and sophisticated now, and David, who without a thought completely ignored Sabrina before, is now enamoured with her. His affections threaten to derail the carefully arranged nuptial "Plastics merger" with $20m dollars at stake. Linus decides to seduce Sabrina away from David? This is the bizzare plot element truly. David is famously alone and Bogie plays him so condescendingly, so gruff. Still he does have a certain decency that David is lacking, to say the least. And The second half of the film is him making Sabrina fall in love with him using situations and stories as carefully designed as any of his million dollar deals. Linus is a hilarious character. He gives a big speech about how the only reason he works so hard all the time, even though the family are wealthy beyond imagination, is to help people. Can you lol in a movie review? Because I was fucking crying. Still this propagandistic joke of a capitalist saint also works to stand in stark opposition to David. David wastes his position in a walthy family. He fritters away his time, drives a sports car, has been married four times. Linus is the decent respectable businessman. The kind of guy that makes this country great. What a fucking joke, right? But it works like gangbusters in the movie. In fact this stacking of the deck in Linus's favor, by making David so slimy as gross, is important because the "dates" that Linus takes Sabrina on do not come across very romantically. That's an understatement. Bogie had so much sexual charge with Bacall. I guess the big difference is age. Sabrina is 22, and Linus must be 52. They don't say his age. The script does a lot of the work. The jokes snap, Audrey Hepburn brings so much energy to the part that she does a lot of the work in creating a sense of romantic possibility. It very much feels like Bogart, not Linus, feels like he is talking to a child. Which I mean he is, in terms just of age difference. He'd seen two of Sabrina's lifetimes. It doesn't really work. And then by the end when Sabrina has completely fucking fallen for Linus and given up her childhood crush on David? The script fucking pops, the story is tight and is very very satisfying. Its just strange how little all that stuff matters On Screen. Its hard to say which is more important. The story? The acting? I always say Story. Full stop. Considered myself of the HItchcock school in that way. But I can't deny that those climactic scenes may work, they may be dramatic, but they would have been absolutely on fire with the right actors on screen. There's just no juice between Bogie and Hep. Their names don't even sound cool together :(

[frequencydave]

Johnny Mnemonic (Longo, 1995)

Come on. Fucking dolphins? I enjoyed Johnny Mnenomic but that's only because I'm predisposed to love everything cyberpunk regardless of its quality. Plus the film is written by William Gibson based on his short story and seems to be in the Neuromancer universe. They mention Chiba City surgeons at least, and Ice, and the Matrix. But unfortunately despite how cool cyberpunk is, how concerned with multinational capital and the disturbing junction between technology, medicine, poverty, and commerce, in the end the way those ideas manifest is just so goddamn dumb a lot of the time. I'm a little drunk for the stupid and fascist 4th of July weekend so I feel free with my language. Why the fuck would you load information into a courier's brain? The world could have been spared this film if they'd just had a flash drive. Okay. So I passed out. Unfortunately the harsh light of day does nothing to blunt my reaction to this movie. Tonally its a mess. It deals with life and death, corruption, trauma, and exploitation, but the world's set and costume design, its perception of the way technology works, and its narrative structure all feel more like a children's film. In other words, its like a comic book movie. I really enjoyed that aspect of Johnny Mnemonic once you give in to the sheer silliness of it, but you can very much tell that the director is attempting to conjure a disturbing "realistic" tone. The disparity between this attempted tone and its expressed tone are hilarious, probably best exemplified by the psychic dolphin in the final act. When the courier Johnny Mnemonic can't get the pharmaceutical data he's carrying out of his head the only "person" that can help him is Jones, a psychic dolphin in league with rebels known as Lowteks. Its so stupid that its very fun, but this movie isn't trying to be fun. Gibson is a genius at describing a world, and there are passages in Johnny Mnemonic that have the jagged edge of the prose in Neuromancer, but he's terrible at plotting and once the movie's basic story starts it just becomes a very straightforward A to B to C to D plot where Johnny meets new friends, gets them killed, and moves on. A movie that is actually very cyberpunk, a genuine cyberpunk that truly predicts the future and disturbs the soul with its vision of media backed by capital transforming human bodies, is Videodrome. The difference between Cronenberg and Gibson is that Gibson tries to get way too specific and in the process loses the emotional core of cyberpunk. Johnny Mnemonic becomes a boring "adventure" where our titular hero just goes through a hero's journey. Stupid.

[frequencydave]

Belly (Hype, 1998)

Written and Directed by the legendary Music Video director Hype Williams, Belly feels like a music video come to life. Not always in a good way. Every single shot in the film is stylized in some way: chiaroscuro, unusual compositions, split screen, extreme low angles, symmetrical framing. There are no coverage shots. No basic 2 shots. This lends the film a breathtaking style, but one that becomes aestetically numbing by the end. When every single shot looks as cool as it possibly can, soon they all seem to look the same. What's more, the narrative is extremely by-the-numbers. Boyhood friends turned criminals; Buns, the bad boy played by DMX, and Sincere, the sensitive soul played by Nas. In Sincere's name we see another stylistic choice in Belly. The story is painted with such incredibly broad strokes that sometimes characters' names become placeholders. Later we meet a charismatic Muslim minister named Saviour. We watch Buns get in to deep while Sincere trys to go straight for his wife and child. I cannot stress enough how saccharinely this distinction is drawn. We cut from learning that Buns has an underage mistress to seeing Sincere holding his baby with his wife in a greeting card image. This isn't entirely a criticism. The narrative simplicity complements the visual complexity, but by the end of the film's brief hour and a half runtime, the blend loses some of the coherence it had in the first act, with Sincere just deciding to go to Africa (the country? I thought it was odd that they didn't even mention which country they wanted to emigrate to,) while in the film's most interesting subplot Buns gets recruited by a government agency (the FBI? probably) to infiltrate a Black Muslim group and kill its leader, the aforementioned Minister Saviour. This film was roundly criticized by many in the black community upon release for its perceived negative portrayal of Black men, but this subplot about the government hiring Buns to kill a leader that we are made to understand represents hope and change and support and growth for black men, it in fact reveals that the movie works incredibly hard to provide a powerful explanation for the environment that produces someone like Buns. And who in our society is resposible for things being that way. Unfortunately the preachy tone of the last act, while politically exciting and a little Oliver Stone-esque paranoid in its style, comes across as false in a way that a film like Goodfellas doesn't. While that film ends with Henry Hill working for the government, just like Buns, Henry Hill is a pathetic suburban loser at the end of the movie. Buns achieves a genuine redemption arc and Sincere makes it to Africa in a cool final stylistic touch. We hear his amazed VO while the crowds of Time's Square celebrate the dawning of the millenium. This sentimental ending is uplifting, but feels hollow after the first three act's almost overly gritty depiction of the New York underworld.

[frequencydave]

The Straight Story (Lynch, 1999)

This movie has the pace of the lawnmower that Alvin Straight uses to traverse the entire state of Iowa. It made me feel the physical weight of Time in a way very few films have. Its impossible for me to separate my experience of the movie from my engagement with Lynch's work. This was the last film of his that I hadn't seen, and famously it is his only G-rated movie, a Disney picture no less. The Straight Story's very existence jars, its title mocking you from within Lynch's oeuvre: the Normal One. I didn't know what to expect. From the credits forward Lynch's signature is on every single frame as it oozes America. Like his shirts, buttoned all the way to the top, and his naive, boyish exuberance, The Straight Story's trappings: the plainspoken dialogue full of Old Time Wisdom, the seeming tranquility of small town America, conceal some kind of unseen menace. Unnameable and unknowable. Its just like Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks for that matter, only the moment of eruption never comes. The camera never zooms into the grass to find the warring gnawing insects below the surface. Instead Lynch's obsessions: Death, Sex, Disability, Dysfunction, Trauma, are all buried inside the reality of the world created by the story. Instead of the juxtaposition of "peaceful" with "chaotic," like Twin Peaks, disrupted by the death of Laura Palmer, or Lumberton's suburbs contrasted with their "Lincoln St.," in The Straight Story all of these things are right on the screen, inextricably linked. In the opening moments, with a Lynchian mystery zoom into a shuttered window, we hear the main character fall. We're meant to think there's a good chance he's dead, everyone who discovers him seems to react that way, as if death is an ever present possibility. Which, when you are 73, it almost certainly is. Sex and dysfunction are there in the pregnant teen runaway Alvin meets on his journey, fleeing her family. Its there in Alvin's own biblical conflict with his brother at the heart of the film. Disability is there in Alvin's developmentally disabled daughter. Trauma is there in his daughter getting her kids taken away by the state, and in Alvin's memory from World War II of sniping one of his own friends and living with the secret for 60 years. Lynch has called it his most experimental film, and the way it creates the sense of time physically Existing is unlike anything I've seen. Alvin is old, this comes up again and again, and one of the ways that the film makes time so tangible is by focusing on this particular man's story. Every single movement, every word, every cigar, is taken with the utmost deliberation, full and heavy with significance. Like there may not be many of them left, and each one must be experienced. Each of the little meetings he has along the way, the lives he touches, the obstacles he overcomes, culminates in a powerfully simple ending that left me feeling spiritually satisfied. Life is a thing that happens To us. "What's the worst part about being old Alvin," a young man asks. "Remembering when you were young," Alvin says. Slow down a little sometimes, you'll get there.

[frequencydave]

What Doesn't Kill You

won't make you stronger. Wilting stalks under a blistering sun need Water not Fire. Sometimes What Doesn't Kill You just kills you. The walking dead as blank as a fart and bundled against the wind. Strong already: nothing to prove or lose. Nothing to gain. Nothing has killed you. Not lacking attempts; The Thing held at bay by sheer force of pill. Before it Doesn't Kill You just bury it alive in the yard. Its sonorous screams can populate dreams of your victory.

[frequencydave]

Live, Love, Leave

I decided to leave my family. I don't deserve them; didn't deserve them to be specific. I don't have them now, "deserves" got nothing to do with it. I didn't decide to leave my family anymore than I decided to love my family. I don't decide so much as have decisions thrust upon me like a wildfire-spark, and then it is done; I have decided-

[frequencydave]

Hit & Run

One night in winter I ran a man down in my pickup truck. It wasn't even a freak accident. I saw him walking; my head was full of buzzing bumblebees and I could not hear the music on the radio despite considerable volume and windows shut against cold. He must have been cold too. His hands were in his pockets. He had brown hair and he was short. I wasn't gonna. I swerved at the last. Fabrication is the enemy of peace, and so I must confess; it felt good. His body flew off into the icy dark, my heart pounding. I wondered if his was pounding or just beating or just still as I rode along. Why did I do that? I know you cannot answer that but I no longer know who to ask. I don't feel bad. I feel like a piece of rotten fruit.

[frequencydave]

Inheritance Blues

I will benefit from my father's pain. Dying ain't easy, but Collecting is. The executor follows behind the executioner. Still doesn't make up for my childhood.

[frequencydave]

Do We Deserve Utopia?

On the other side of the Sun there is another world. One where no one hungers while others are full, where trees in need of cutting get cut so the saplings can grow. A world whose bounty is never left to rot while a few laugh and stuff their faces. This other world will cross our orbit soon; We deserve our fate.

[frequencydave]

The Ecstasy of Grief

Overcome by lust your body tenses and contracts like a frightened clam. Your eyes snap open and you are a sweaty mess. Damp and alone on your king-sized mattress your room so inky that you might have once looked for stars above together. Picking out constellations on the ceiling like little kids. Starless but love made them real. Remember she's dead! It's just a simple fact; crying over spilled milk won't put it back in the glass-though she loved milk, even all by its lonesome. Always grossed you out.

[frequencydave]

Kidnapped!

I open my eyes and yet it's still dark; the world is a roar. Something sticky on my wrists and I can't move my hands. A bump and my whole body lurches and my head cracks against the roof. I try to jerk my feet. Paralyzed but a hardbeat so heart its like my organ trying to escape, and leave me behind. Another damn bump and I'm in a trunk. Stale rainwater and the reek of fear-sweat. Who could my captor be? I have no friends; no enemies to speak, no money, no influence over any one or thing. Perhaps they just want to blow my brains out just for a laugh and the experience. The thought fills me with a bittersweet calm. No more bills, no more waiting and watching and struggling to live. No indecision. These Men, because they are always Men, these Men are my saviors. Angels sent from God in answer to my many pleas. "Please take this cup from my lips." Jesus was just tired, and so am I-I am so very tired and I can feel my hearbeat slow and slow and despite the dark I close my eyes and thank God for murder.

[frequencydave]

An Encounter with an Elephant

Deep amid fynbos and erica and desaturated desert scrub brush I came upon a herd, a family, their cushion pads crushing proteaceaen cones as their coarse tail fwaps. The babies out front, their huge alpha Mom pulling up the rear. Standing perfectly still, not even to raise my camera. They can hear rain from hundreds of miles away and I know that they can hear my heart palpitating. I bet they can hear my fingers trembling. The Matriarch moves to the front, tiny eyes-tiny holes in a sea of pits and dimples and drooping folds-these tiny eyes seem to appraise me. S T I L L I want to think but my mind is clouded by the screaming word. I bet they can hear my fear. There's something about the Mom though- mine's name was Delone- there's something about her that reaches out from those tiny glass orbs and says to me, "Hello soft pink thing, would you like to meet my family?" All around us little flowers, capitate inflorescences and geophytes, their bulbs safe underground. The air is as Still as a corpse and she blinks and I am calm. Her trunk unfurls like the tresses of a good-looking maiden and she brings some scrub up to her mouth and slowly masticates. Possessed I reach out reaching reaching for the striated pleats, grooved and pocked, my heart stops and our skins touch.

[frequencydave]

Narcissus Ashamed

When I was young, Mom made me aware of the words of a wise old blind man. "As long as this boy never truly knows himself, he'll grow old as me beneath Sol's bright rays." My mood and spirit and blackened pride kept me by myself as I was beset by manhood. Alone but never lonely. The old man's words long forgotten long dismissed. Wandering in a wood one day, feeling followed but divided from friends, I discovered a fountain, silver-clear and bright; it looked as if it had never been touched by bird or she-goat or shepherd. A stillness hung there and the peace drew me from ruminations to drink. Beholding myself I cannot drink. I cannot move. My eyes like twin stars. From the past those words returned and burned in the cores of those stars. I already did truly know myself: selfish and vain and horny all the time. Disrespectful and full of contempt for any and every thing and one but me. I was full of hate and surely there was enough for myself. I disgusted me; beautiful demon whose only aim was disintegration. He who disapproves will be equally disapproved and I disapproved of all. My face shimmered on the water and I could not look away. "What is wrong with me? Why am I like this? I deserve to die." The cheat that I sought would not relieve me without a little help. Longings never to be satisfied. Outstretched upon the overshadowed green I knew what to do. Tortured by a strange desire before not known to me. Death not my bane. It would end my woe. As my tears fell into the pond they disturbed the face and the old man's words then made sense to me. I would wither there like yellow-wax in a hidden flame I would let myself melt and just disappear, sparing my Mother the shame of watching me become the Trash that I truly knew I already was. As I sank into the water, "Farewell! Farewell and goodbye."

[frequencydave]

Every Breath an Act of Theft

We stole our bodies from God and erected this facade to distract ourselves from death until we breathe our last breath We sing we dance and we write we destroy and are contrite We thrill at a lover's touch We get sick and die and such And in the end we can see there's nothing from which to flee To lie down and rest is sweet after all we are just meat