Category: You Have Got to Check This Out

Song written and performed by Lou Reed

There must be an age between fifteen and twenty five when you need to be in a dark enough place with just enough curiosity that you discover the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, and John Cale. At least, that was the way it worked for me. I don’t think anyone showed up at a party and said, “Let’s all take a break from dancing and listen to this really cool tune. It’s called I’m Waiting for My Man.” You need that private moment because those songs aren’t meant for a group listen. Lou’s voice is a whisper in your ear telling you that life is weird and worse, but maybe, just maybe, you’re not alone and maybe, just maybe, we can all survive until tomorrow, no matter how messed up things get today.

And those words come out like a tumble, something your drunk roommate babbles at two a.m., having stumbled home when the bars closed. They are so certain that they have had an epiphany and you need to understand it, but somehow your roommate never makes as much sense as Lou.

And he is “Lou,” not “Reed” because he is your friend, even when he is trying to destroy your brain wth Metal Machine Music. He is your so very clever, so very awake friend. Then you read his interview with Lester Bangs, that pop music poet laureate, dead too soon, and wonder where things went so batshit crazy for your friend Lou. Of course, you recognize the way that he screws with everyone because he has done the same with you in his songs. How can you possibly reconcile I Love You Suzanne and Walk on the Wild Side and How Do You Speak to an Angel? After all, this isn’t Cole Porter who was allowed to write about any damn thing. This is Lou Reed who could only tell you the truth, right? Even when he’s in a movie, in a role originally intended for Dylan, the only other person who had songs pouring out of him like a leaky dictionary…

And then he goes away. And then he comes back. And you’re both a little older.

And then there are the albums that change everything: New York and Magic and Loss. You can’t say that people had never crafted rock and roll music for adults because that just isn’t so, but an awful lot of it was too pretty for that anger still burning in your gut or too one-dimensional for a world that could barely be captured by three dimensions. Those two albums helped you, continue to help you, remember that life will keep coming at you with its cornucopia of comedy and tragedy, beauty and ugliness and sometimes you’re going to scream and sometimes you’re going to weep or laugh or grind your teeth and sooner or later it will all be over and you damn well ought to remember that you’re here now.

And then people act like he’s written a standard with Perfect Day, which is okay because everybody deserves to be noticed for more than one thing.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 272 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Movie written and directed by Leos Carax

How to approach a work of art that defies understanding? I almost wrote “easy” understanding, but that would imply that art always needed to be transparent in its intentions. Also, I don’t know that understanding and engagement are equivalent. I think the paintings of Franz Kline engage before understanding creeps into the communication between artist and viewer, for example. Maybe that is true of most abstract art. No matter what Mondrian may have to say about order and sanity, his art attracts the eye with bright colors and strong, geometric images.

Holy Motors is a tremendously entertaining film which I find very difficult to describe, let alone explain. As much as Chinatown may be about the skewed ways we perceive the world around us, the plot fits into many noir tropes which make it somewhat straightforward to discuss. Holy Motors is about a performer who rides through Paris in a limousine taking on various roles from family man to murder victim. He also leads the band during the intermission. Abetted by his driver, he appears to be employed in all his endeavors by an organization that has others fulfilling the same job.

Certainly, we all take on different roles throughout our lives and it would be convenient to dismiss the theme of Holy Motors as a traipse through life, but too many of the sequences are tinged with disconnects for such a chronological approach. And the ending throws any such thoughts out the window, as far as I am concerned.

Interesting aside, a lot of weird movies have been made. Everyone stretching the boundaries tends to dip at least a toe into incomprehensibility. More and more, I think the trick to getting away with it (meaning that the message is not utterly lost) is maintaining both a sense of humor and a certain self-deprecation. Virtually everyone that I have discussed in this series has those qualities. From Warhol to Carax, I think that artists end up labeled as hard, haughty, and unapproachable when their whole intent of creating art was to find a way to reach others. Maybe Kafka wanted his works burned after his death because he was just afraid that no one would get his jokes, of which there were many.

So, where does that leave us with art that defies easy explication? Sometimes, you just have to let the ocean cover you with its waves. You may only be left with sensual reminders that you ever set foot in the water, but sometimes that can be enough. Across the sea, far out of sight, someone else is standing on a beach wondering if the ripples started by their toes have had any effect on anyone else. No matter how hard they search the horizon, they will never see the results of what they set in motion.

Do I think Holy Motors is a movie for the ages? I do. Do I think someone will ever come up with a satisfying description? Since Carax generally refuses to discuss his work (and when he does, I can’t call it satisfying), I doubt it.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 273 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Story written by Howard Waldrop

Howard Waldrop is one of the best writers that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. His prose sparkles and remains direct. His words flow like salmon heading upriver to spawn, with brilliant leaps and stunning movement. You could read him for the shear experience of the tales, letting them wash over you.

Of course, they don’t simply wash over you. Howard Waldrop is challenging. He primarily works in the sub-genre known as alternative history. Every story asks questions that lead to a deeper contemplation of our shared experience on this planet. Because the stories inevitably present a life very similar to the reality that we have all agreed upon, the slight (or extreme) difference more often than not forces a consideration of why things are the way that they are. Must they be so?

More than merely questioning our past, Howard Waldrop asks a lot. He also puts a lot into his stories. Frequently, he has discoursed on the importance of research in order to provide the proper backbone for whatever form of fiction you are creating. Writers are no more industrious than anyone else and Waldrop comes up often enough as the exemplar of our accuracy aspirations. As a reader, it is helpful to remember that you don’t need a doctorate degree to enjoy the stories. Accept the fact that the author did the homework and you are allowed to see the result. Don’t worry- you won’t miss the part where your reality is different.

Howard Waldrop stories resonate. Just watch someone else read one of his stories. You can tell the moment they finish, because they slowly lower the text and stare off into the middle distance. A few brain cells are now firing in new ways. Then their eyes refocus and they look at you with a vague smile like maybe you understand, too.

With this series, I am only writing about those artists who have resonated for me, but Howard Waldrop is another thing entirely. Like Dickens and Monet and the Beatles for me, Howard Waldrop changed my life. I knew that Kurt Vonnegut had somehow stumbled from science fiction into literature, but he seemed to work awfully hard at leaving all that genre labeling behind. Waldrop seemed to drag science fiction along with him into literature and didn’t give a damn what you called it.

Having said all that, you may be the sort of person who has already gone looking for Waldrop work and noticed that a) there is not a lot, and b) it is hard to tell where to begin. If you can find Night of the Cooters, then maybe start there though Things Will Never Be The Same looks like a good way in also. Besides, that title is likely to define your experience of the work within.

Decades ago, I had the privilege of hearing Howard Waldrop read one of his stories out loud to a small room of admiring readers. Writers do not often make the best readers of their own work. A penchant for isolated scribbling does not translate to a talent for public performance. The shear joy that he brought to being there infected everyone. You could see the magic that went into the writing. Like Dickens (perhaps the greatest of all author readers), who also attacked difficult terrain, Waldrop has the ability to bring life to what so many of us beat down to two dimensions with our dogma and disdain. If nothing else, I have learned to love those moments when I can feel the actor inside come alive as the words pour onto the page.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 274 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.