Jimmy Buffet is kind of genius. He parlayed the same kind of music for decades, made a fortune slinging it on tour, had a bit of a cult following, set up a batch of restaurants, made the brand perfect and seamless and middle American. When he figured out he was getting a bit stale, he went knocking to Nashville. Or Nashville figured out that they needed to preserve an aging A-List while trying to convince us a B List could come up from the minor leagues. So he talked to Kenny, and Kenny figured out how to work out making money on a set of side businesses (the specific nature of the Tequila came from Sammy Hagar, and if you were a mathematician, Country's Taste could be straight in the middle of a Venn Diagram between Kenny. Sammy and Jimmy). Zac Brown Band realized that if they were doing a beach album, they would have to play the same game, and they went off and talked to the Sybil of the Keys. They kept playing back and forth--kept recording together, kept working it out. They couldn't quite do the tropical thing, because Keith has been running on creative fumes since Toby did Stay in Mexico in 2009. So, they looked at what was playing--saw how much Brantley Gilbert's Country Must be Country Wide cribbed from I Love This Bar, noticed that they both had a restaurant that needed to be propped up, thought about some excellent cross marketing, stuff that could be played on Wednesday nights at Jimmy Buffet's Cheeseburger's In Paradise or Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill, and make some money on the up-sold margaritas, and put something out that was just gorgeous in it's cynical reserve. Jay Z should bow down.The best thing about all of this--is how ingrained Buffet is in Nashville--he was a song writer in the 60s, and he has been in and out of the market for a long time, and really set the whole thing off with Alan Jackson in 2004. Toby's 2009 song is a five year old attempt at reclaiming something from 2004. The 2013 song is an attempt to reclaim something from 2009 which tried to reclaim something from 2004. But Because Buffet (and really Toby) are so damn good at playing the markets, noting were the demographics are, and making product for a fairly tight niche audience--and are realizing that country, because of it's regional and social cachet, is one of the last few niche markets left, and because that niche market depends both on touring and on localized spaces where those communities can get together between touring--and also knowing that in the suburbs those spaces are usually chain restaurants--and chain restaurants depend on theme and brand...and lastly, that they are brands. It is a perfect circle of working out the product for the money. The song's production, its "fun", its elegance in how it knows its market--it is more a Warholian artifact of working class realism ("What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking" except a blended margarita during singing Karaoke at either of those places has this glamor and anti-glamor--it is Toby or Jimmy, but Toby and Jimmy are just like us, and maybe one day we can have this lux leisure time, and to do that, what we need is another round.  That kind of work can only be done if you spend as much and as much effort in figuring out which way the business is going, and if you have enough wisdom to know where it has been. The hamburgers might not be Edenic in Cheeseburgers in Paradise, but that shit is fun. You might not Love This Bar and Grill, but you damn well know that if you go in on Mondays and you are in the miltary, you get 20 per cent off. That is more than enough. (The song is for the marketing, the text itself doesn't matter much)

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P1010777, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

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P1010472, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

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P1010018, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

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P1010563, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

"Instead of intersectional wedges, or islands, then, come situated moments of unity and divergence as we examine the lines that are drawnbetween andaround people, the points at which ‘personal experiences’ come together and split apart. The material, relational and embodied consequences of these shifts through time can take centre stage, and affiliations become more than an empathetic gesture. "

Margaret Gibson"Intersecting Deviance: Social Work, Difference and the Legacy of Eugenics"

Trauma and joy abstraction the self from the idea of the self. Both reflect though absences--in not knowing where one’s body is, in aphasia or aphonia, to feel physically separated from the corporeal. The absence or negation from “the real” marks their most explicit similarities.

Two of the most obvious examples of this negation, are Ida Bauer’s discussion of her traumatic history, to Freud who later canonized it in the case study Dora, and the 15rh century mystic Teresa De Avila Autobiography. These two texts are useful, in that they provide a chronological spectrum between early modernity and late modernity.

As Helene Cixious argues in her play Portrait of Dora, the creation of Dora as a narrative of trauma was the creation of a separate selfhood. This mark of isolating the self, could be found in how trauma followed systems like melancholy--moving from moods to states to problems elucidated by medicine, to biological systems.

If how trauma and melancholy have a remarkable similarities, then joy must have a similar narrative. But Joy is still considered strange, and it’s relationship to the body is still marked by a different kind of rupture. Comparing these two authors, centuries apart, becomes a way of noting both how the ruptures of joy and trauma can have similar shapes, but how that shape has been molded differently, and how joy’s linguistic presence might displace trauma and melancholy’s prioritized place in the depictions of the lived experiences of modernity.

:  also, can we talk about lucite

 Sent at 12:04 PM on Sunday

 me:  and how much io love mucite

or the luke bryan in nytimes

 Sent at 12:10 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  what's he doing there?

 Sent at 12:19 PM on Sunday

 me:  its an epic  takedown of him and country music in general

i think they are w rong

but its a br illiant peice

 Sent at 12:20 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  who wrote it?

 me:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/arts/music/luke-bryan-the-leading-gentleman-of-country.html

curracama

 Josh:  thanks

 me:  i think its much better than he does

 Josh:  i agree with his general negativity toward luke bryan

that spring break album was terrible

but i read on

 me:  i kind of loved it

 Josh:  HE WON FUCKING ENTERTAINER OF THE FUCKING YEAR?????

 me:  but it has a v. spec purpose

and that purpose is fulfilled

hes not justin moore

 Josh:  "there is perilously little to say about Mr. Bryan"

Caramanica is SO GOOD

 me:  he has three problems

a) he doesn't think that country ever had a pleasure principle

b) he thinks that Bryan should be doing something more than he is

c)  that Bryan is v. good at his limited range

d) he has a large, juicy ass

 Josh:  wait, are these caramanica's problems?

 Sent at 12:28 PM on Sunday

 me:  i think so

 Josh:  yeah, i guess suburban country's nothing new

but shouldn't Bryan be doing more than he is?

 me:  why

there are other people doing other things

 Josh:  like, picking songs his drummer might enjoy playing?

 me:  do you expect justin townes earles or jason isbelle to write about fucking soriroty girls

?

 Josh:  kenny chesney has written well about that

and sung well about htat

and luke bryan hasn't

i mean, his songs just sound thin and dead

 me:  define thin

 Josh:  the sound of the Spring Break songs seemed really tossed off

not tossed off in a rowdy garage rock way

just like everyone got into the studio and did the bare minimum

demo quality

(bear in mind, i listened to this once and grimaced and returned it to the library)

 me:  i dont know

 Josh:  the lyrical signifiers contained nothing new

 me:  its young, dumb, and full of cum

thats a legit market

and for a genre that has always been tense about explcit sexuality

i welcome that

he has a great voice

and the skeletal quality has a kind of solid quality

i mean its not genius

its often too easy

but ...

 Sent at 12:35 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  i mean, i was impressed by the significance that a Luke Bryan Spring Break album even exists

and he does have an appealing warmth to his voice

but the warmth just seems to sit there

i don't sense he can do anything outside a very narrow range

 me:  i think that blankness works as a channel for the audience

and the range is intended to function as a conduit

and i think the rship b/w the audience and the performer

is something new

 Josh:  really?

 me:  it foregrounds the audience

it tears down the fourth wall

 Josh:  what's different than kenny chesney's relationship to his audience?

oh, i see

 me:  chesney still maintians its authority as performer

i mean i think t hat what people read as blankness or thinness

is really a pulling back

to foreground the audience

to allow for the audience to have a live expereince

 Josh:  but

 me:  which sells records in a time when records arent selling

 Josh:  but

why can't you have a "live experience" with someone who's actually a good singer?

the spring break eps and album struck me as souvenirs

the kind of thing you'd buy to remember your hedonistic weekend where you saw the one third-rate country singer whose name you can't remember

 me:  but they remember his name

the artist of the year is votedo n by fans

 Josh:  because they bought the ep!

 me:  but the fan culture of luke bryan is strong

they love HIM

 Josh:  but why?

and wasn't your argument that they love themselves loving him?

 Sent at 12:42 PM on Sunday

 me:  my arguement

is that luke bryan's warm, congenial

quite smart perfomative quality

suggests a new kind of realtional aesthetic

that country has tried to foster and failed

do you want to pitch this somewhere?

 Josh:  i wanna pitch luke bryan into the roiling sea

no, but

and is his relational aesthetic defined by being warm, congenial, and smart?

(which, i don't get "smart" from him, but let's set that aside)

 me:  his metagame is hella smart

his game game is dumb

hes the judy holiday of country music

 Josh:  yeah, that's what i thought

black and white actresses are where you go over my head

but i'll trust you on that

 me:  born yesterday

 Josh:  but are you saying that country has tried and failed to develop a warm and congenial relational aesthetic with its audience?

and luke bryan has finally succeeded?

 Sent at 12:49 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  because dolly parton

 Sent at 12:50 PM on Sunday

 me:  dolly parton had tragedy

and no one every thot that they were dolly parton

except dolly

 Sent at 12:51 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  so are you saying luke bryan is the first country star onto whom an audience can project themselves?

by which you mean, "think they're as good as"?

 me:  http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/435617?rpp=20&pg=1&rndkey=20130812&ft=*&deptids=11&when=A.D.+1400-1600&who=Bartolomeo+degli+Erri&pos=1

exact opposite

no project

ion

(this is a ne w thesis i am still working thru

)

let me restart

four thots

a) country has always pretended to have this down home roots aesthtic

b) it held in tension t his need to be a performer

and a need to be part of the audience

c) for a bunch of reasons, countrys suburban roots right now have placed most of the money in audience participation venues that reward tailgating, and big auadiences, and partying and

etc

its a difft kind of work

d) so a few years ago a bunch of people asked questions--how do we rework this balance. i mean you see things like fanfair from the 60s that this balance always occured

but the fans now have all the power

and so, chesney, mcgraw etc

had pushed the balance a bit

but were still pretty heavily in favour of boundries

five thots

e) bryan and his ilk gave up on the boundries.

in that his work is entirely constructed to play w/ the fan culture

which i think might be new

and this might be pitchable

and i mean its obv. false--see erick church playboy fiasco

 Josh:  yeah, this is good stuff

 me:  but ITS FUCKING FASCINATING

 Sent at 1:00 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  but still, there's a difference between analyzing how Luke Bryan works

(and the inexplicable phenomenon of why people buy his albums)

and calling his music good

i can't fault caramanica for thinking he's boring to listen to

 me:  i do think hes good

 Josh:  and caramanica's no traditionalist

 me:  in the sense that he does what i need him to do

he makes me dance, he turns me on,

i mean do we get angry at pitbull for making fuck and dance music

why are we angry at bryan

 Josh:  PITBULL HAS A PERSONALITY!

(i do like "country girl shake it for me" -- THAT seems new, absolutely modern, etc.)

 Sent at 1:04 PM on Sunday

 me:  and it took me a long long way to get there

also, do you know

he respects the womens autonomy

this kind of libertine personae is hella more interesting and less dangerous than lets say justin moores new one or kip moores hey pretty girl

 Josh:  "hey pretty girl" is worse than "crash my party", it's true

ok, i should turn in

it's been a pleasure

 

i have spent a lot of time in the last few days just fucking around on the net, or sleeping or reading...and i'm happy, just calm and happy, but i'm really scared to do this, because to my brain this feels like depression behaviour--i have a really difficult time working the difference b/w this house is safe and nice and low key, and im not stressy, and so yeah, and the whole feburary thing--there is something atavastic in how depression reasserts itself w/o context--where paying attention to context doesnt matter. (i was going to say that i wasnt depressed, but the foundaitonal irony of depression is that even when you are happiest, the wolf is waiting in the parlour).

thirty  things i loved in the national gallery (going to include the first nations show, b/c my notes are a mess)

1. chardin's back  from market (two tiny chardins interspersed with the rest of the french 18th century stuff, got a little lost), but they were both genre scenes with children, the one w/ the market has two brown glass jugs the same shape and colour, as his jugs and plums, hidden in the far left corner. 
2. Blecher's Young Oak Tree,  another tiny painting (maybe 1 foot high) gilded back ground, perfect dutch tree, on a small side wall that had three other tree paintings--oil on gild must be hell to preserve, so badly lit.
3. the competing signs on Eworth's Lady Dacre from the 16th century, with painted text, a small painting w/i the painting, a background of tapestry, and various coded still life references, kind of reminded me of how angry critics got wrt mid peroid johns--the jumble and confusion of competing signs is one of the things artists do. 
4. The titian they have, handsome man, with a dark beard, wearing black against a v. dark blue bckgd, with a slash of red scarf, doubleplushott. 
5. The Sami artist Sontal Kelliker-Cowles makes these sculptures of reindeer and sheep guts, and porcupine quills, that are so tender, fleshy, and translucently grey, that they remind me of the best of hesse
6. christi belcourts large baize green painting, with traditional metis beading motifs painted on it, like large being 10x6 at the least. 
7. a couple of beading and embrodiery projects--Tersea Marguiles comissioning a group of women to overlay embroidery on the blood stained sheet that shourded a murdered activist, 
8. and Nadia Myre comissioning 230 friends to "bead the indiain act" literally, takign the pages of the government agency, and going over it in cimson beads
9. Edward Poirtas Louis Reil Rope--a complicated story, Poitras was part of thisreineactment group in regina, who had a line in one of their newsletters, that said that 2000 lbs of rope where shipped from ottawa to sell as souvineers--poitras bought 2000 lbs of rope to see what that would look like, piled in a corner, in this golden hue, it's so subtle, and such a difficult reminder of growing up on the praries, and reil still being alive. 
10. greg staats dark string, a wampum remake of brakhage style formalism. 
11. marie watt blanket stories, i have seen smaller versions of this, but this one went 50 feet tall, a monolith compiled of blankets carefully folded. 
12. monkman orgy 
13. Kwakwaka'wakw Ritual Object, of a raven riding an orca, in the middle of a room of Emily Carrs
14. An excellent Haida Cedar Box, with a large blue green moon motif, in the same room. 
15. Kurelek's Winter North of Winnipeg. (excellent use of v. little colour variation and white on white)
16. Brian Jungen's Gas Cans, were in the wrong gallery. 
17. Jeffery Gibson's paintings on elk skin--abstract, and in delicate pastels, whites, and greytones--how he chose to highlight or erase the tears in the elk, painting over, or starting a set of rays from one hole, or not reparing it at all, the formal choice and the problem of material. 
18. a violent and dark red, almost maroon stripe painting of newman almost overpowers voices of fire. 
19. a v. good, but textureally complex martin from 85 (the gesso is much bumpier) abuts a halley triptych made of dayglo and stucco--actually places martin in a unique context. 
20. tender diagonal sandback. 
21. how ugly jack bush was when he went fully ugly. 
22. jimmie dunhams encore tranquillity (i dont know if it was v. v. sad or v. v. funny.)
23. several erotic depictions of pan 
24. a white on white, enamel on steel, flavin 
25. another flavin named after oakham which really could mark the place of trinitrian theology. 
26. Peirro Di Cosimo Vulvan and Aleus from 1490 has a panther, two partridges, a camel and a MOTHERFUCKING GIRAFFE.
27. Prudence Howard:  two prudence heward's today at the national gallery, lots of thots about them, haunting, difficult work that they are, but i keep coming back to the one in montreal, with the mirros, and the one in the national gallery, of the girl in the pinafore, and her friendship with isabel mclaughlin, and the mysterious health complaints, and the glam death in LA...she's a dyke, isn't she?
28. Janvier signed some of his work from the 70s with his treaty numbers. 
29. Paranoid from Montainai, from the mid 70s, is too bright, too shiny, and too ugly, just two colours, weirdly the same as kodak. 
30. Vernon Ah Kees Three Channel video installations featuring custom surf boaards, one with barbed wire. 

ottawa list:

1. musuem stuff 
2. finialise budget with rachel 
3. pitch wendy peice to killing the buddh 
4. think about conference presentation 
5. work on memoirish thing 
6. email boisvert quesitons 
7. jukebox stuff