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Friday, May 5, 2006

The Best of Burial

Posted by on May 5 at 13:55 PM

The talented designer of this CD cover is Burial. 115444856_de4ced0dc6.jpg

Burial is from South London (the image on the CD cover is an aerial shot of South London), he is practically unknown, and this month he releases on Kode9’s label hyperdub, a CD that will be to the 00s what Tricky’s Maxinquaye was to the 90s. If you want to know the direction that sound art must (and will) go (to survive), then listen to this mix of Burial’s new and darkling music by Kode9 on Radio One’s electronic music show Breezeblock, which is hosted by the beautiful, blond motorcyclist Mary Anne Hobbs.

Now to my point (and I always have a point to make): This recent comment by Burial, which was made during an interview with the blogger Blackdown, offers a vital (if not the most vital) lesson not only to those who make art out of sound but those who use words to make art. Burial says: “I’m not a musician, and I’m still not, in any way, but when I heard those tunes, I realised you could make tunes without being `a musician.’” This is something poets of our post-human age can never say—a person who writes poetry wants to be known, recognized, revered as a poet.

In the middle of the 19th century, the French poet and translator Charles Baudelaire offered the poet two paths: one was to be found in the prose poem “The Lost Halo”; the other, in the poem “The Albatross.” By way of “The Lost Halo,” the poet dumps the holy importance of being a poet, and he/she heads in the direction that will end in their saying exactly what Burial now says about not being a musician. The “The Albatross” is a path that heads in the opposite direction of the total rejection of the holy halo. Along this misty way, “the poet resembles this prince of cloud and sky,” the albatross, the saint, the beautiful soul—the poet, the writer, the novelist. Go to poetry slams, open mics, literary readings of any kind, and what you will see, what will bore you to tears, is this albatross, flying and flying and flying in circles.

What literature really needs, if it is to survive, if it is to be of any relevance, if it is to make clear progress, is no more albatrosses. One must be able to write poetry, write a novel without being a poet, being a novelist. Burial is not a musician (the word makes him sick, suicidal even—”[If I were to make music like a musician,] I’d throw myself under a train at Clapham Junction.”) and this is the reason why his music is so much better than anything you will find on the poetry, fiction shelves of today’s bookstores.


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Good notes. The world doesn't need poets, writers, or musicians. It needs ordinary people doing their jobs like policemen and firemen saving lives without fanfare.


I hate people who consider themselves "writers". Writers never have anything interesting to say. I'd much rather listen to a cab diver, a dishwasher, anyone but a "writer".


As soon as someone claims that they are a "writer" whatever they say is going to be baloney.


SHIT, I'm too late!
I think you have a special little stalker buddy.

Hey, where did the troll's post go?
Okay, I'll just stop now.

Hey Scholar Nigger,



Some stupid Seattle hippies don't know that it's OK to use "nigger" now.


Your editor desensitized readers to "faggot" with his "hey faggot" thing.


We need to get the word out you're doing the same for nigger.


Please explain why "faggot" and "nigger" are OK.

Huh?


So are nigger and faggot now OK to use?

Huh? Huh?


Here's an actual question:


Are nigger and faggot now OK to use?

Hey Student,

Wow, it takes a lot of guts to stalk and heckle Mudede under such a stupid alias, and with such a weak pretense. I'm sure many less tenacious people would have something better to do on a sunny Friday afternoon, but not you, Student.

I award you an 'A' for effort.

It's a beautiful sunny day and we all should have better things to do than respond to students.


Words are powerful and it's never wrong to ask about the proper way to use a word. There are no stupid questions, only teachers afraid to admit they don't have all the answers.

A proposal: It would be interesting to see The Stranger produced by people who are not professional writers or reporters in a medium that is not the printed word, say, via a podcast on a text-free web site. The Stranger would funnel audio and image collectors onto the streets of Seattle and collect and arrange the sensation of the city. Least anyone become a professional and fossilize into fussy text-producers, the entire process would get passed along from recorder to recorder. In this way, we could collect the temperature and texture of the city by expanding our skin. Advertisers would find their way to The Stranger the way flowers find their way into lawns, and viewers of this spectacle would come as yellow-jackets come to collect pollen. And a future commerce would evolve free of the ancient command and control of the alphabet.

We would not be completely free of text. Under all of this would be code writers producing text. But these code writers would be of a clearly lower order. They would be the grubs, earthworms, and ants essential to the fertility of the beds.

Professional writers are overpaid crybabies no longer needed by the public. We can make our own music, shoot our own videos, and create publications without the need of an editor's textual control.


Poetry and painting died sometime in the early twentieth century, writing will be the next to go. Code writers do more to shape public discourse than painting ever did, even at it's peak.


When the writers in a publication become afraid to even respond in words to readers, it's an indication that "authorship" is taking it's last gasp.


We'll rid the world of toxic "authors", "poets", "musicians" and "artists" and allow grubs, earthworms, and ants to thrive.

I'm pretty sure I don't want to listen to any "cab divers" whatever the hell they are.

It's obvious the "non-professional" writer meant cab drivers.


One thing I won't miss about professional "writers" is this persnikity crap about typos and spelling. The code writers have already created technological solutions to many spelling and grammar errors.


We finally invented a machine that can spell because no one likes snarky English teacher types who ignore the meaning of what's being written and can only point out minor spelling problems.


Making music without being a "musician" and being a writer without giving a thought to spelling will free us to have the poetry of life itself be a part of everyone, at every moment.

Gee, do you think?

Give me a break. These heroic code writers of yours have done no such thing. There's no form of writing that depends more utterly on perfect spelling than computer programming. Put a curly bracket in the wrong place and the whole damn thing fails to compile.

Not to mention the inability of computerized spellcheck to distinguish among the simplest of words: to, too, two.

Pay attention to language and communication and the poetry of life will take care of itself.

i think these divisions are obnoxious. i am in total full and wonderful agreement that anyone should be free and should be encouraged to create music and poetry, whether they choose to study a craft and adopt a label that they believe describes them, or whether they exercise the free talent that nature and god provided them with to produce wild magic. but to suppose that one path is inherently more valuable to human culture than the other is a preposterous jest. vast incredible realms have been shown to us by people who studied the inner mechanisms of an art form and revealed hidden beauties the rest of us never considered; just as incredible realms were revealed by the innocent happy accident of a novice, or better, one who never chose art as a vocation. the world needs both and all types of appreciation of these wonders. it absolutely does not need the perpetuation of some kind of stupidly myopic presumption that any one path holds all the keys to the kingdom. but to be clear, we have certainly not reached a point where the diligent study of art has dead-ended us in the world. the mastery of a jazz musician who analyzes the wizardy of past genius is quite different from the energetic stomp of the punk musician who reinvents the wheel once more for the benefit of any who hear; why does it matter the origin of this creative spark?

also, god fucking dammit, it's "theatre".

The personality cults that develop around a "writer" or a "musician" become more about the "idea" of the "writer" or the "musician" than about the music or literature that is being produced. The actual product of the "cult" artist becomes the stuff that fuels open mics and readings.

I think thats true, and I would agree.

it seems to me that those who are creators in the vein of burial... or kafka... or dostoevsky... have a certain abhorrance of the "idea" of a "writer" or a "musician" as both labels implicitly suggest that anyone who self identifies as either is suggesting to the world that they are, in fact, a "writer" or a "musician" and recalls the spectre of the personality cult where the man comes before the words. the most interesting artists reject the label because it really has absolutely nothing to do with the creator but in that which is created and absorbed by others. you are not your words, and when one likes your words, they like the words, and not you.

so if literature (or music or art or...) is to not only survive but to exist authentically, then the artist really only need to avoid falling into the trap of personality and "reverence". the author's biggest danger is losing the ability to tell the difference between who they authentically are and who "the writer" (which is a fiction) has become in the eyes of others.

To simplify, if someone tells you they are a writer, a musician, a poet, they are most certainly not. Most great writers were not recognized for decades after their death, and many were not even published until they were dead.


What fills the poetry and literary publications today will vanish. Todays true poets and writers will not be recognized for many decades. Anyone being paid to write today, who passes out a business card that says "writer", is more interested in the idea of writer.


Our real writers are now auto mechanics, cab drivers, dishwashers, night shift nurses, who could care less what anyone thinks of them. Instead of claiming to be a writer, or being concerned about selling their words for money, they simply write.

Hey Scholar Nigger,


Gee why get your panties in a bunch about open mics? The ones I went to in Ohio had teachers, nurses, bartenders, and truckdrivers. Some of the stuff was pretty good, some was pretty bad. Just like life.


No one introduced themselves as a "writer". In fact the whole point of the venue was it was for people who considered themselves ordinary.


Todays real bullshit factories are the "creative writing MFA", "screenwriting MFA", and "poetry MFA" programs. Talk about a "the idea of being a writer"!


Any dumbass knows Dostoyevsky would last about five minutes in one of todays creative writing mutual masterbation fests. Any real writer knows a writing degree is worthless.


So why is a scholar nigger of all people against a venue where ordinary people can read whatever the hell they want? It was the scholar niggers who went around claiming the dead white European Males were preventing all the lesbian, Peruvian, disabled, feminist poets from being heard.


And now our scholar nigger wants us to compare what we hear at open mics to Dostoyevsky! Ipse dixit


Why not leave the night shift nurses at the open mics alone and compare yourself and your editor to Dostoyevsky?


Compared to Dostoyevsky, you both are wanna bees. Compared to Dostoyevsky everything in your publication is a hack job. C'est vrai?

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