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September 2008
The Archives
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09.29.08Ask the DustCalexico Carried To Dust (City Slang) Calexico? Cue dustbowl prose about hazy desert mirages, roadhouse waltzes and seventy different shades of Texarcana. From the opening ‘Victor Jara’s Hand’ (so close to traditional Tex-Mex it could be Los Lobos after a night on the rum) to the closing ‘Contention City’ (Sparklehorse with spurs) the sextet swing from the orthodox to the outré with ease. Sure, the reviewer could list off song titles and ascribe musical characteristics to each one: gorgeous tremelo guitars, braying mariachi brass fanfares, eerie pedal steel, shimmering omnichord, nylon string guitar interludes, whispering, confidential vocals. But it might be more ...
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09.27.08Goodbye Old NeonThe night I met my friend Sean Murray back in December 2004, he pressed into my hand a CD containing the text of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, a book he described as being one part of a melancholic millennial trinity that also included Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs and PT Anderson’s Magnolia. Intimidated by the prospect of reading a 1000-plus-page tome on the screen, I didn’t get around to beginning it until a couple of months ago when I found a copy in the Secret Book & Record Store on Wicklow St in Dublin. In the interim, Wallace had ...
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09.25.08The Sick Bag Of CuchulainnThe folks from the Edge08 festival invited a few of us up to Ballina recently to talk about how punk rock influenced Irish literature. That’s a big question. The short answer is ‘not enough’, but of course it’s a little more complicated than that. The corollary is that Irish literature influenced punk rock – or at least the Irish strain of the virus – a lot more than punk subsequently re-influenced modern Irish writing. Irish punk bands and their new wave cousins swallowed Joyce, Beckett, Wilde and Flann O’Brien, chewed them up in a blender and spewed them back ...
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09.24.08The View From Last NightFriar Murphy of these parts was on RTE's The View last night casting a beady eye over selections from the Stranger Than Fiction documentary festival at the IFI.
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09.24.08ObsceneNext Nov. 19, Barney Rosset, founder of the legendary Grove Press, will receive a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation. He’s also the subject of a rather wonderful looking new documentary, Obscene, which opens in the US this weekend. movies.nytimes.com/movie/405869/Obscene/trailers www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/movies/24obsc.html
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09.23.08Presenting: The JK Ensemble SessionsOn the 2nd of October, The JK Ensemble plays host to an extraordinary gathering of jazz, contemporary, classical and popular music artists. John Kelly presents The JK Ensemble Sessions live from the stage of the Button Factory, Temple Bar. Joining him will be: Bill Carrothers with Kevin Brady and Dave Redmond Carly Sings and the Callino Quartet Chequerboard Ensemble ICC The Jimmy Cake 8pm till late. Tickets €15 from www.rte.ie/lyricfm/jk or www.buttonfactory.ie. All acts are being recorded for broadcast on RTÉ lyric fm.
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09.21.08The Layers, Stanley KunitzI have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to ...
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09.21.08Voice of the WireMany thanks to David Simon for making the Wire screening and public interview at the IFI on Friday such a pleasure. Also, big shout out to Angela and all at Canongate, Peter Mc from Repforce, Jane, Tony, Paul N and everyone at the Film Institute, not least those who paid in, listened hard, asked questions and inspired a certain Mrs Dillon to dub the event Wirecon.Also wanted to tip the hat to Sean, the folks at Ballina and fellow writers Ferdia, Pat and John for making the Edge Festival 08 such a hoot last week.
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09.18.08Berdaches and Soft Man Beings“Shamans frequently encounter androgynous and bisexual beings and spirit guides in their initiation journeys. They play a key role in the drastic reorganization of categories that shatters the shaman’s old perception of reality and opens him or her to the multiple dimensions of existence. Along these same lines, gender ambiguity frequently characterizes many shamans who themselves were gay or lesbian. Homosexuality and androgyny create a liminal status that helps to legitimize the shaman as interpreter and go-between on both social and spiritual levels. In Siberia a gay male shaman was called “a soft man being.” In native American communities, a young ...
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09.17.08An old Irish shape shifter psalm…I am the wind that blows across the sea;I am the wave of the deep;I am the roar of the ocean;I am the stag of seven battles;I am the hawk on the cliff;I am a ray of sunlight;I am the greenest of plants;I am a wild boar;I am a salmon in the river;I am a lake on the plain;I am the word of knowledge;I am the point of a spear;I am the lure beyond the ends of the earth;I can shift my shape like a god.