Saturday, December 22, 2012

Why Fiona Apple's "The Idler Wheel..." was the Best Thing in 2012 and Other Stuff that Doesn't Suck


1. The Idler Wheel is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do - Fiona Apple

In an age where every statement is clouded with layers upon layers of irony and meta-text, where the very notion of social media masks every action with pretense, forcing even the most bland of us into a life of performance art, the existence of Fiona Apple comforts me. In her, we have an artist who disappeared from the public eye for almost a decade and returned with a record so earnest and revealing that it forces us to remember what real emotions feel like. My Fiona Apple fandom is well-documented, so perhaps I'm exaggerating or gushing or whatever you want to call it. Still, the jittery, stripped down music presented to us on The Idler Wheel... coincides perfectly with the persona on the stage, and I can 't help but believe (maybe I need to believe) that in Apple is not only a genuine artist but a genuine person as well.

Every Single Night, Left Alone, Werewolf


2. The Master - Paul Thomas Anderson

Pretty much everything that can be said about PTA's The Master comes out in the film's first "processing" scene. As a movie that deals with Scientology through obfuscation, The Master seems almost elusive in its aim, a cult in and of itself. Yet in that first "processing" scene, we see a disheveled, alcoholic veteran in Joaquin Phoenix's Freddie Quell find something in Lancaster Dodd's (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) "Cause" that seems to speak to the inner turmoil within hi,. Freddie is erratic, prone to outbursts, and highly susceptible to suggest--the perfect candidate for a disciple--and the procession of  Dodd's "processing" technique and the repetition of simple questions ("What's your name?") into more probing questions about Quell's "past failures" leads the two into an emotional crescendo before dissipating into the lull of post-baptism. The films builds in much the same manner and washes out into the silence and emptiness of a cult's many promises.

Theatrical Trailer

Note: The next two entries actually do suck, but I want to right about them anyway. So here we go...

Saturday, December 15, 2012

To Fish

sean enfield is an asshole
who has taught three people
how to fish. one of them died
two years ago of starvation
while the other two live
impoverished in the slums
of houston waiting for fish
to hook themselves on the end
of one of their lines so that they

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Mark Twain and a Kitten: An Ode

When this image was first brought to my attention, it seemed me that metaphorical stars were metaphorically aligning, and my documentative instincts immediately led to a trance of reflection. It's a horrible way to live, but we make due, don't we?

Anyway, I couldn't help but feel as though Twain was reaching out to me from beyond the grave via the medium of another literature enthusiast's blog. “Some people scorn a cat and think it not essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these.” We, Enfields, are with you, Sam--undoubtedly, we are with you.

I was in Junior High when a teacher first introduced me to Mr. Clemens, the same year a balding football coach, through a class dubbed "Health Class," introduced me to intricacies of my then-changing body. In fifth period, we read Huck Finn aloud, several timid white children tip-toeing around the word "nigger" as though it were poison ivy or a land mine or something of that sort whilst looking in my direction to make sure the ethnic half of me hadn't taken offense, and in sixth, we watched a fifteen minute illustrating both the birds and the bees in unwanted detail, which was I how I saw the first vagina I'd ever see, crowning head and all. I had already developed a self-consciousness about my weight and my plump, perpetually-dry lips and my clammy, perpetually-moist palms. I tried to hold hands with the girl who had asked for my help on the Huck Finn paper, but she was not a fan of the nervous sweat dripping from our shared grasp.