Change the water flow

[sovay]

Happy Juneteenth. I am glad to know the original handwritten record of General Order No. 3 survives in the National Archives. I am glad to see, too, that Massachusetts recognizes it as a state holiday, although in practical terms I'm not quite sure what that recognition translates into. Otherwise, federal holiday already.

1. Elsenet I was asked for recommendations of contemporary Black musicians and spontaneously generated a far from comprehensive playlist, which I reproduce here because I have not posted much music in a while.

Afrosideral, "Ode Ni Ire (feat. Nickodemus)"

Algiers, "The Underside of Power"

We're on the wrong side of the power
It's the shadow
It's just a fire thrown across the wall

Angélique Kidjo, "Born Under Punches"

I'm a tumbler
I'm a government man

Anthony Russell & Veretski Pass, "Train"

Deym bilet vus di haltst in tash—
Dus iz dayn mazl, dayn rayze-plan,
Vi tsi furn, un vus far a klas.
Dus iz bashtimt fun Got—der direktor fun ban.

The ticket that you hold in your wallet—
This is your fate, your itinerary,
Your destination, and in which class.
This is determined by God, the director of the train.

clipping., "Air 'Em Out"

The keyword is kemmer
That's what your ass need

Farai, "Punk Champagne (feat. TONE)"

Poor rich boys
Poor rich girls
We could be sipping on this punk champagne

Jamila Woods, "ZORA"

Kiss of chocolate on the moon
Collard greens and silver spoon
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes you can't stick onto me

Jidenna, "Classic Man (feat. Roman GianArthur)"

The ladies on my elbow ain't for the show
Every madame on my team is a top general

Mdou Moctar, "Tiknass (Sunbone)"

Lonnie Holley, "I Woke Up in a Fucked-Up America"

Would you make it look at me?

My Midnight Heart, "Drown"

I've found I cradle things that make me weak
Belong to words I'd shout but never speak

Oko Ebombo, "Black Bowie"

A woman must kiss and a man must cry
You were born on both sides

Orion Sun, "Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don't Leave Me)"

On the dancefloor, you wooed me like a warm breeze
Swept me off my feet
It feels so good to know you

Nilüfer Yanya, "In Your Head"

And I can think what I want
And I can feel what I feel
Until you say it out loud
How will I know if it's real?

The Reminders, "Have It All"

It ain't enough just getting by
It just seems so small
And I want a little more than a little
I want to have it all

Rhiannon Giddens, "At the Purchaser's Option"

You can take my body
You can take my bones
You can take my blood
But not my soul

Songs of Our Native Daughters, "Moon Meets the Sun"

May the God that you gave us
Forgive you your trespasses
We're survivors—you can't stop us
And we're dancing

Sudan Archives, "Confessions"

I know it's weird
How all this green appeared
I think I dreamt it here

Zeal & Ardor, "Devil Is Fine"

Little one got to heed my warning
Devil is kind
He come in early morning
Devil is fine

2. Ian Holm has died. I am not sure that I have ever written about him, but he was several people onscreen who were important to me. Nevertheless, the moment I heard he had died, having most recently rewatched Big Night (1996) with spatch, my instinctive response was "BITE YOUR TEETH INTO THE ASS OF LIFE!"

3. Courtesy of selkie: the three-headed Etruscan basilisk. You tell me what else that looks like, unless a guest star in the Godzilla franchise.

Also courtesy of Selkie, selections from yesterday's photoshoot are now on Twitter. Tiny Wittgenstein seems to have been stunned into silence. I think it's doing me good.

Comments

[gwynnega]

I look forward to digging into that playlist! I only know a few artists on it. (Do you know Stew & the Negro Problem? Stew is an old friend of mine, but also he has made some of my favorite music.)

[niqaeli]

Just off the top of my head, I offer a couple more black contemporary artists that I love:

Janelle Monáe, Pynk

So, here we are in the car
Leaving traces of us down the boulevard
I wanna fall through the stars
Getting lost in the dark is my favorite part

Megaran, Cry of the Planet

and there will be a day when we rise,
but that wont be until we open our eyes and recognize the lies

[sovay]

I look forward to digging into that playlist! I only know a few artists on it.

Enjoy! I worry a little that I overloaded the person who asked for recommendations in the first place, but I kept thinking of people and songs I liked.

(Do you know Stew & the Negro Problem? Stew is an old friend of mine, but also he has made some of my favorite music.)

No! Please link me!

[sovay]

Just off the top of my head, I offer a couple more black contemporary artists that I love

Thank you! I know Janelle Monáe (she does not appear on this list because I was trying to name people not already recommended, and there were a lot of recommendations of Janelle Monáe), but not Megaran. I shall listen. [edit] I like.

[alexxkay]

Ian Holm was in many movies I loved, and at least one movie I hated (but it wasn't his fault for being egregiously miscast in such a hot mess of a film).

Hurrah for the stunning of TW!

[sovay]

Ian Holm was in many movies I loved, and at least one movie I hated (but it wasn't his fault for being egregiously miscast in such a hot mess of a film).

Oh, yeah?

Hurrah for the stunning of TW!

Thank you! I'm just hoping it keeps up.

[gwynnega]

I will restrain myself from linking twenty songs. Here's a song from the first Negro Problem album: "The Great Leap Forward," and one from the second Negro Problem album: "Repulsion." Then here's something much more recent, from Stew's theater piece about James Baldwin: "Jimmy."

Somewhere in between all this, Stew wrote the book for Passing Strange, and there's a Spike Lee film of it which I highly recommend. Here's a song from Passing Strange (but not from the actual production): "Work the Wound," and a couple of snippets of the show: "Keys/It's Alright" and "The Black One."

[sovay]

I will restrain myself from linking twenty songs.

Not like he needs to hear it from me, but your friend Stew is amazing.

[gwynnega]

Yes, he is (and I'm happy to introduce you to his work)! It was one of the highlights of my life to be in Los Angeles in the nineties when the Negro Problem were playing all the time.

[larryhammer]

Guest star? Nah, that’s King Gidora himself.

[skygiants]

yessss thank you for the playlist and the recs, I'm excited to dig in and go music-purchase wild on the next Bandcamp friday!

[niqaeli]

Oh, fair! It's weird, with Monáe I'm used to thinking of her as super well known these days (I was introduced to her back with ArchAndroid, because, well, awesome black lady doing cool shit with cyborgs, that's basically as solidly my jam as you can GET), but it turns out she's still... not, quite? As I discovered when I did an aerial routine to Pynk and half the studio had never even heard of her. Which boggled me.

The whole Black Materia album is great; most of it works really well even if you don't know FF7 from a hole in a wall. And if you do know FF7, it's got even more richness.

[davidgillon]

the moment I heard he had died, having most recently rewatched Big Night (1996) with [personal profile] spatch, my instinctive response was "BITE YOUR TEETH INTO THE ASS OF LIFE!"

Judging from the last para of his Guardian obit https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jun/19/ian-holm-dies-alien-chariots-of-fire-bilbo-baggins that's precisely what he did do!

[kenjari]

Since I have been all about the punk music lately, I offer two recommendations from that genre:
Rebelmatic, a great old school hardcore punk band from New York.

The 1865, a terrific female-fronted punk band whose searing album Don't Tread On We explores aspects of American life in post-confederacy 1865.

[alexxkay]

From Hell, adapting Alan Moore's graphic novel. In the book, William Gull is a MOUNTAIN of a man, physically and psychically an overwhelming presence. Ian Holm is... not that.

(Reading _From Hell_ aloud was the main way I courted my now-wife, Kestrell. When the film came out, we went to see it as (IIRC) a Valentine's Day date. Some years later, she expressed surprise at learning of the existence of the film, and wanted to see it. Apparently, it was SO BAD she had blocked out all memory of it!)

[sovay]

Since I have been all about the punk music lately, I offer two recommendations from that genre

Thank you! I was not previously acquainted with either of these bands. [edit] I like them both a lot, but Don't Tread on We! is blistering.

[sovay]

Judging from the last para of his Guardian obit that's precisely what he did do!

spatch made me aware of the number of his marriages last night. I believe my response was something like "Or you could just date people!"

(I am admittedly working on making a second marriage happen myself, but it's simultaneous, not serial.)

[sovay]

yessss thank you for the playlist and the recs, I'm excited to dig in and go music-purchase wild on the next Bandcamp friday!

You're welcome! (It seemed like a good time to include artist-benefiting links.)

[sovay]

Guest star? Nah, that’s King Gidora himself.

That is who I was thinking of. I apologize for downplaying him.

[sovay]

From Hell, adapting Alan Moore's graphic novel.

I haven't even seen that movie to be scarred by it and I keep forgetting it exists. (It was clear from trailers that it diverged significantly from its source material, at which point I lost interest.)

[sovay]

(I was introduced to her back with ArchAndroid, because, well, awesome black lady doing cool shit with cyborgs, that's basically as solidly my jam as you can GET)

Legit.

(I discovered her with "Many Moons" from Metropolis: Suite 1 (The Chase), because Metropolis.)

but it turns out she's still... not, quite? As I discovered when I did an aerial routine to Pynk and half the studio had never even heard of her. Which boggled me.

I would have been boggled, too. I think of Monáe as just part of the landscape by now. Even if I didn't like her music as much as I do, she'd still be my benchmark for modern pompadours and a very high bar to clear in the wearing of sharp suits.

The whole Black Materia album is great; most of it works really well even if you don't know FF7 from a hole in a wall.

I don't know FF7 from a hole in the wall and I liked what I heard.

[sovay]

It was one of the highlights of my life to be in Los Angeles in the nineties when the Negro Problem were playing all the time.

Time machine, dammit!

(It still counts if I was alive at the time but didn't know something cool was happening.)

[kore]

SHE DID NOT WIN AN EMMY. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE. (I mean, I know, racism. But, JESUS CHRIST, how could she not even get nominated for ArchAndroid AND not win for Dirty Computer? aleladhsjasfklj900990)

Altho then there was this gloriousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6Rt06Xwl4w

[kore]

I love that playlist, it's amazing!

I haven't seen anyone else mentioning it, but while the LOTR stuff is good, I will always always remember Holm for being completely heartbreaking in The Sweet Hereafter. There's one monologue where he talks about his daughter having an allergic reaction as a baby that is just indescribable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wjy1mpt_Gg

[kore]

That movie was SO BAD. So, so bad.

[sovay]

I love that playlist, it's amazing!

Yay!

I will always always remember Holm for being completely heartbreaking in The Sweet Hereafter. There's one monologue where he talks about his daughter having an allergic reaction as a baby that is just indescribable.

I've never seen the movie, but it was highly rated in both the Guardian obituary and appreciation.

I've been trying to figure out what I even saw him in first. He's one of the actors who alway seems to have been there and who I was always happy to see. Just chronologically, the likeliest culprit is Branagh's Henry V (1989), because I saw that in high school when I didn't see very many movies, but then I can't remember what I noticed him with. All of the films in which I started to pay attention to him were grad school or after. Perhaps it was Lord of the Rings after all.

[kore]

It's an amazing movie, maybe his best. I know a lot of people who rate it as one of those "great movies I will see once and never again," though. (I've seen it repeatedly because the structure and directing are really breathtaking.)

[pameladean]

YES, I came here to say that about Ian Holm in The Sweet Hereafter. He was amazing in a very strange and, I imagine, difficult part.

P.

[kore]

YES, he's so amazing. And that scene he and Sarah Polley have together (I think it's only one) is astounding.

[selkie]

TW is occupied trying to swim his way out of this afternoon’s mango lassi. It’s thick. He’ll be a minute.

[davidgillon]

Yes, I noticed the word 'fiance' cropping up in a post earlier. Congratulations!

[sovay]

Congratulations!

Thank you! Planning has been somewhat complicated by the advent of plague, but maybe we'll pick up some cholera wedding luck.

[sovay]

TW is occupied trying to swim his way out of this afternoon’s mango lassi. It’s thick. He’ll be a minute.

Does he still have the bubble-wrap water wings?

[sovay]

He was amazing in a very strange and, I imagine, difficult part.

I have been sort of away from movies all month (which is its own species of problem), but this sentence is very appealing to me.

[sovay]

Altho then there was this gloriousness

I didn't see any of the Oscars this year! That's wonderful.

[kore]

The backup dancers are wearing costumes from snubbed films! IT'S SO GREAT.

[gwynnega]

Fortunately there is video! (I was at that show. This is the first lineup of the band, featuring my dear friend from high school, Gwynne Kahn, on bass. She and I were named after the same person.)

[sovay]

Fortunately there is video!

Hooray!

(Which Gwynne were you both named after, if you don't mind my asking?)

[gwynnega]

We were named after the best friend of Other Gwynne's mother and a friend of my dad. She passed away right around the time we were both born. We wound up at the same school together not knowing about any of this!

[selkie]

Yes, and a little PFD we made him from pool noodle. But I’m... I’m so sorry, he drank an awful lot of lassi. I’ve packed him securely away while he sleeps off his mango cardamom bender. You’ll have to clear his calendar for several days.

[sovay]

We wound up at the same school together not knowing about any of this!

That's nuts/wonderful. When did you find out?

[gwynnega]

I kept hearing about there being another girl in the school with my name. (She was a couple of grades ahead of me.) Eventually we met, and it turned out we were both Patti Smith fans (which was quite uncommon in those days). Eventually we became good friends, which is probably when we found out that our families knew each other!