SMOKESTACK LIGHTNING
Don’t worry. Today I am a mixture of unawake and chipper. It’s a get-up-and-go Saturday. It’s 8:30 a.m. and I just booted up and I am a third into my bagel and just a couple sips into my iced mocha.
Joy Division, The Complete BBC Recordings
When I got here, there was someone I worked with over five years ago at Dark Horse getting ready to leave. I spotted him, but he didn’t spot me. He’s a nice guy, but really, I have no interest to play catch-up. So we have to switch on. The game is appearing less aware than you are. Always know where your avoidance target is, but always manage to be looking the other way. Turn and go off in a different direction when he nears you. Hide in plain sight, but always be prepared for it to go south. Have plausible deniability at the tip of your tongue. “Oh, I didn’t see you.”
I’ve been known to shop, go through whole stores, always staying just out of sight of someone I know. How invisible can one become? Usually, it’s pretty easy to do, just because in general people aren’t very alert to their surroundings. We’re too comfortable in our public lives, and you can easily take advantage of a situation just by paying attention to what is around you. Then again, who is to say they aren’t running the same game on me?
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Before I left the house, I managed to catch the new Sugar Ray video for the second time. What is up with that? I mean, beyond Mark McGrath’s hideous hair crime (bleached and shaggy? Whaaaaa? Buy a comb, millionaire!). Are they trying to be Pink now? Are they coming up to get my party started? They’ve always had armpit stains of desperation forming on their career, witnessed by how quickly they settled into pattern, going from lame rock band to lame soft rock band to churn out a couple of extra hits that closely resembled their first hit—but this, this is just sad. Next single will be about how McGrath is his own worst enemy.
Massive Attack vs. Mad Professor, No Protection
I’m trying to listen to as much electronic music as possible when working on Gravitation. Shuichi’s band, Bad Luck, is kind of an OMD-type band—electronic with guitars. A little Gary Numan, perhaps. There is also a bit of overly emotional poetry in the smattering of lyrics we’ve gotten for his character—so good, moody stuff like Joy Division also helps out. Gets me in the right place to do whatever it is that I do. (And actually, OMD’s Organisation is next in the stack (I had to bring CDs with me, since no MP3 player). It’s cold and pretentious, arty and distant—perfect for Gravitation’s confused romance. And the Dandy Warhols new, electro-driven album, Welcome to the Monkeyhouse cued up right in time for a performance section.)
And speaking of the MP3 player, perhaps the greatest tragedy is not being able to get into the drive and remove the files. Not that I am losing anything I don’t have on disc (as far as I know), but more for some of the folders I had built. Collections of Geneva, Suede, and Paul Weller, in particular, where I gathered all the b-sides and compilation tracks I had, creating folders with 40 or more songs—not impossible to rebuild, but still frustrating.
Current Soundtrack: cable radio, new wave station (currently Oingo Boingo's "Weird Science")
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