NICE OMELETTE

It doesn’t often occur to me to review food, but you know what? It turns out that the food at the Café Crèma on New Cross Road is fuckin’ a!

Yes, if a cheese and broccoli omelette could really be said to be the omelette equivalent of The Thermals, then that was the omelette I had.

You see, I forgot to make myself a sandwich today, and I spent the morning in work freezing cold and hungry, and I guess that probably made it extra nice.

So I went to the café, wondering what I’d end up with for lunch. And I said, “Gimme an omelette!” (well actually I requested one in a more soft-spoken and polite fashion – everyone in this joint is soft-spoken and polite, which suits me - but I’m just trying to make this more punchy to read, y’know?), and I sat down next to the radiator (heat), and I drank my coffee (which wasn’t much good, but it’s still coffee) and I read my book.

So I sat there and I finished reading John Fahey’s visionary and somewhat disturbing account of his rediscovery of Skip James. The scope of the disillusionment and general ‘lack’ expressed in Fahey’s writing didn’t really gel very well with the mild-mannered, shiny-eyed art-schooly enthusiasm radiated by the café and it’s patrons, and this cruel conflict of incompatible vibes started to subtly recall some bad memories in a way I doubt I could ever really explain.

But then they brought my omelette, and boy howdy, what an amazing fucking omelette! DAMN good food! I am renewed! Somebody really put a bit of effort into cooking this thing, and making it taste nice – a concept rarer than gold when grabbing lunch in an urban area. This omelette was just a beautiful as the Fahey book, and just, no almost, (actually not at all, but I’m here to praise the omelette, so let it slide), as beautiful as the studenty girls with their dark, dark hair and nose-rings sitting in the corners and studiously doing whatever it is they do.

And the bread was pretty great too! It tasted like proper baker’s bread, not this nasty, doughy supermarket stuff. I wouldn’t have thought there was a decent bakery left within five miles of this dump (London = bread nightmare). So again, somebody’s been putting in some effort. And I appreciate it, I really do!

And besides omelettes and bread, this place does other neat stuff too. Like on April 11th, they’re doing a thing in the evening where for £6 you get a meal, a movie screening and a performance by a band... how’s that for value? And furthermore, the band is Congregation, who are perhaps my favourite currently active band in London. And, as has been established, the meal is sure to be good, so even if the movie sucks, that’s still two out of three. Will the wonders of this heavenly café never cease..?

Sadly, I won’t be able to go to that event because I will be in Wales for my Easter break, but you (yes, YOU) might like to attend.

Bit of a trivial and overtly personal post today I realise, but just thought I’d share my omelette gnosis with you.

NOT IN MY AIRFORCE

An imagined (ie, I MADE IT UP IN MY BRANE) conversation with Robert Pollard, regarding his song “Not Behind The Fighter Jet” from the Guided by Voices album “Mag Earwhig!”, which I bought for £6 from Oxfam in Shrewsbury at about midday on February 19th 2006. (It was quite a nice day for February, although it turned overcast in the afternoon and rained at one point.) I think “Mag Earwhig!” is actually one of the best ever GBV albums, and this is my favourite song off it. (No mean feat, as there are many other good ones, like “Little Lines”, “Learning to Hunt”, “Bulldog Skin”, “Jane of the Waking Universe", “Choking Tara”, and well, I could go on…).

BH: So this song – “..Fighter Jet” – I really like it! Does the song reflect a certain anger regarding American military aggression and the average U.S. citizen’s assumed culpability for it?

RP: Well I guess there is a certain amount of that creeping in, but not consciously… obviously American military aggression wasn’t quite such a hot topic when I wrote this song back in 1997. Really I suppose it’s more trying to be a non-specific and universal frustrated yet optimistic love song aimed toward the whole world…

BH: Like most of your best songs are!

RP: Er.. yeah! Sure! And the military aspect kind of represents the tragedy of how happiness and the things people really need in their lives are so simple and easy and obvious, and yet if you’re not lucky enough to stumble across them, recognise them and grab them, they can be elusive and real hard to find… and so many people who are unable to hold on to these things overcompensate by instead building up these complicated and frightening plans and systems, and physical structures of metal and explosives, in order to precipitate needless and self-defeating geo-political rampages… so fuck that, it’s much braver to acknowledge what you lack and go back to the source to find it… that’s what I’m saying here.

BH: Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought… I was kinda gonna skirt around it, but thanks for getting straight to the point.

RP: Personal/Political – never pretend they’re not connected.

BH: Plus cos of the army thing, you also get to use lots of cool, exciting words in the song, like “paths of glory”, “wounded mercenary bleeds”…

RP: Yeah, that too – we all loved guns and blood and war movies and stuff when we were kids, right? Before rock music and girls came along. So it’s good not to completely forget that. And of course I still like aeroplanes a lot. They’re really cool. I hope that’s not a contradiction with what I was saying earlier…

BH: Life is full of contradiction, and it is good to acknowledge this in song.

RP: For sure!

BH: So, these are some pretty big themes to be putting across in 2 minutes and 13 seconds…

RP: In song-writing terms, that’s four times as long as you need to make your point. I let this one run on a little because it had good rock-out potential.

BH: Hell yeah. Did you guys play this one live much?

RP: Well you’re imagining me here and writing my lines, and you never saw any of our live shows or bothered buying the live albums, so how could I possibly tell you?

BH: Fair point. So what’s your response to people who say that you assemble your songs like crossword puzzles out of random riffs and cut-up lyrics, and that none of them really mean anything?

RP: Well, idiots are always with us. Sometimes that’s the case, and sometimes it isn’t. And c’mon, isn’t this essentially how everybody writes songs? I just do it out in the open, that’s all. You start with your building blocks, pile them up, and meaning creeps up on you unexpectedly from a weird angle you’ve made in a dark corner. It’s a process of discovery.

BH: Amen to that. Well thanks for your time Bob, I appreciate it.

RP: God bless!

Mp3 > Guided By Voices – Not Behind The Fighter Jet

Stereo Sanctity Radio Show No.2

OK, after the overwhelmingly positive response to the first one, I have just finished uploading my second shot at a radio show, and (musically at least) it's a blast, if I do say so myself.

So get over to the Radio Show page and check out some stuff by the likes of The Kinks, Betty Harris, Arthur Russell, John Coltrane, the Paybacks, Billy Childish, Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.

As ever, let me know what you think.

Some thoughts on INLAND EMPIRE.



Having seen David Lynch’s ‘Inland Empire’ on Sunday night, (and having coincidentally suffered from constant, crippling headaches ever since), I would venture the opinion that it is hands down the best film released so far this century (certainly the best I have seen). I am truly awed.

Rest assured - the various critics / idiots who have proceeded this film like the four horsemen, moaning deathlessly about it’s self-indulgence, incomprehensibility, tedium… forget ‘em. Dullards with little understanding of what Lynch is doing and too little sense to appreciate a genuinely powerful expression of cinematic art when one is placed before them.

A thorough analysis of ‘Inland Empire’ could (and hopefully one day will) fill books, so for the moment I’m gonna keep things brief and give you an overall low-down of my impressions of the film:

1. Lynchness

'Inland Empire' is Mega-Lynch, Uber-Lynch, more unrefined Lynch than one could ever hope to see, the towering pinnacle of Lynchitude. Thus far, this is the apex of Lynch with all that entails. There is enough Lynch-meat to keep Lynch scholars chewing for years to come.

You want the established Lynch signifiers? Well you got ‘em!
Every box on my old ‘Lynch correspondences’ sheet ticked.
Plenty of new elements to add to the on-going… whatever it is… too, but I won’t give those away.

The main thing that differentiates ‘Inland Empire’ from prior work in Lynch terms though is this:

The previous films (with the exception of ‘Eraserhead’) have been content to occasionally meander (or leap) into The Other Place / Weird Evil World / Lynch-Space (delete as applicable) before returning to the ‘real’ world as the audience breathes a sigh of relief. ‘Inland Empire’ on the other hand plunges into Lynch-Space within the opening 45 minutes and NEVER LEAVES.

The prior winner in terms of Lynch-Space intensity was ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’ (his other square-upsetting box office failure you will note), but ‘Inland Empire’ gives us a full world tour from the inside out (maybe the inscrutable title hints at this intention).

2. Cinematic and technical stuff:

On this level, ‘Inland Empire’ is absolutely STUNNING.

Going by the grumpy and misleading advance word on the film, I was half-expecting some patience-testing marathon of blurry black & white, wobbly camera-work, abstract long-shots etc. Well not a bit of it!

In purely visual terms, this is the most thrilling, imaginative, beautiful and unique thing I have seem at a first-run cinema since, well... ever. There are sections where I swear I could have been watching some bizarro Lynch-Space reinterpretation of (Fellini's) '8 1/2'.

If Digital Video allows people to get their artistic vision across with this much power and clarity, then bring it on, and a bit of pixilation be damned!

Oh, and seriously: see this one on the big screen. It’s worth it.

3. Emotional reaction:

I realise this should hardly be a surprise given his previous work, but for a film allegedly lacking in any conventional narrative (obviously it isn’t, but more of that later), the range of powerful emotions 'Inland Empire' commands from the viewer is incredible. Even when you've lost any solid grasp of who characters are or what they're doing, the film nonetheless keeps you profoundly connected to them and the feelings they're experiencing, a connection which is only intensified by the masterfully expressionistic cinematic technique.

People have been saying this is a 'dark', 'nightmarish' film, and yes, it is, more deeply so than any other film you're likely see this decade.... but it is most definitely NOT a cold or alienating film; for every moment of tormented misery or stark, screaming terror there is another of spell-binding beauty or utter hilarity...

...ah yes, the hilarity: there aren't quite as many laffs in 'Inland Empire' I would have appreciated (being a particular fan of Lynch's oft-misunderstood sense of humour), but the ones which are there are absolutely EXQUISITE. I laughed myself half to death in places, before being terrified to the point of blackout by the very next scene... did all these people proclaiming it "boring" actually watch the same film I did??

4. Explanation / Plot Interpretation:

Ok, the big one. This section is, I suppose, largely for the benefit of those who have already seen the film, so if you haven’t, you might like to skip forward.

For the rest of us, let’s lay down some theories:

4.1 A good reductionist strategy for those who find themselves wanting to approach Lynch films as purely psychological/emotional investigations: ‘Inland Empire’ is about an actress who is given a big part in a film. She has traumatic stuff in her past. She goes mad. This film = her experience of madness.

4.2 An online forum poster suggests that the vast majority of the film makes clar, linear sense if you keep track of it’s movements / intersections between three separate strands: 1. The story of actors filming a movie, 2. Footage from the movie that's being filmed, and 3. The (Polish, scary) events upon which film is based. Harry Dean Stanton’s speech toward the start of the film about the origins of “On High in Blue Tomorrows” is obviously the focal point of understanding these three strands. This interpretation is straightforward, helpful and allows the viewer to get the most out of the film’s drama and mystery I think.

4.3 Another poster on a different forum suggests that the whole Hollywood-set sections of the film are the aspirational dream of the crying Polish woman who is watching the rabbits. Thus the central axis of the film centres on a conflict of identity as the Hollywood fantasy(?) world tries to retain it’s shape against the intrusion of brutal Eastern European reality, the woman’s traumatic experiences twisting the latter into unspeakable shapes of terror and violation as she hopelessly begs salvation from her already corrupted Hollywood alter-ego.

4.4 Or, let me know YOUR favoured interpretation and I’ll add it in here. That the film allows all of the above, plus no doubt hundreds of other personal understandings, to fit perfectly over it like an Ordinance Survey grid of the senses, reveals the crystalline genius of it’s construction. BUT, we should remember the golden rule: never mistake the map for the territory. It would be singularly disappointing to try to believe ‘Inland Empire’ has anything like an objective ‘X = Y, The End’ meaning, no matter how much we might have tried to squeeze one out of Lynch in the past. ‘Inland Empire’s beauty lies in it’s capacity as a cipher for innumerable stories; perhaps a different one for each individual viewing experience.

5. Miscellaneous questions / talking points (a few of many):

5.1 The ‘rabbit’ sections of ‘Inland Empire’ are extracted directly from a series of short films entitled ‘Rabbits’ which David Lynch released via his website a few years ago. He described the project simply as follows:

"In a nameless city deluged by a continuous rain... three rabbits live with a fearful mystery"

You can watch them here.

5.2 About two thirds of the way through the film, the tough-Laura who is telling her story to the guy in glasses on the top floor talks about a sinister carnie called ‘The Phantom’. But the film’s ‘in order of appearance’ cast-list reveals that ‘The Phantom’ was actually the THIRD PERSON WHO APPEARED ON SCREEN…. Who is he?

5.3 What does the phrase ‘Inland Empire’ mean – specifically, where is it? And who is the man who has gone there? Is it just me, or does the completely confounding scene where those two guys (the Polish husband and the man who was controlling access to the Rabbits room at the start of the film?) drive to the shack in the middle of the woods in search of this man form in some strange sense the very CENTRE of the film? The sort of axis of it? No?

5.4 So – ‘AxxoM’, the significance of ‘4 7’ – does anyone even want to give it a shot?

5.5 The cigarette-burn-thru-silk trick: could this be the first explicitly revealed folk-magick method of opening up Lynch-Space? Fascinating stuff; could very easily be a Burroughs-esque ‘gimmick’ too, if Burroughs had ever dared truck in feminine imagery.

5.6 Are they gonna release a soundtrack to this movie?? It would be insane!

6. Conclusion:

If you have a genuine interest in film, an active mind and a human heart, please DO NOT miss the opportunity to see ‘Inland Empire’ in the cinema.

MORE RADIO SHOW BLATHER...

Ok, I have done the sensible thing and ditched YouSendit in favour of starting a Stereo Sanctity page at Podbean.com.

I have reposted the first radio show there, and you'll be able to either download it or listen online directly from the player on the site, until such time as I have to take it down to upload the next edition. Which is much more convenient, I'm sure you'll agree.

It's all still thoroughly DIY though, I would like to emphasise.

Once again - enjoy. And I'll have a proper post with lotsa words coming up shortly!