Wait Mr. Pitchfork! Stop right there!

"Whether reading interviews with Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros frontman Alexander Ebert or simply listening to the last decade of his music, one gets the sense that he's the type of guy who might lean deep into a hammock and-- sans irony, with joint-- say, 'Yeah, man, music really is the universal language.'" - from the Pitchfork review for Alexander, the self-titled solo debut by Ebert. 


Read no more! What more is there to say? Grayson Currin, the author of this eh-he-sure-is-great-but-I-just-can't-resist-criticizing-it review, would likely disagree with my decision to ignore his poetic deconstruction of the album along with his carefully calculated score. However, I urge you to follow  my example and just enjoy the first sentence - not to mention the music.

Narratives

Do you ever feel suspicious about the line between constructed narratives and everyday life? I don't so much in everyday life, but when I encounter representations of life - the news, the movies, print of any type, etc. - I wonder. I used to get all excited when I got the facts. Now, I've realized "the facts" is not a straightforward set of information at all. Everyone is trying to convince you that their clip, their quote, their story is the truth. Not just newsy shit, mind you. I mean everything. What I'm getting at is the feeling of being in a classroom and being told that we are exploring the facts about a narrative. Fuck! Isn't the class a narrative? Isn't academic discourse a narrative? What privileges it above the intuitions of the folk? Remind me, one more time, why learning more will make me smarter. It seems that it just raises a whole new world of doubts.

warp

This post will take you places.

Die Antwoord star in Umshini Wam (directed by Harmony Korine)

my desktop background 3/12