Oak Cliff, 10.11-12.2024

I hung up some flyers for Hay Festival Forum Dallas in Tarrant County, and for my trouble, Ernesto Monteil and Javier Garcia del Moral rewarded me with a weekend pass with a plus one. My wife and I don't get to go on many dates these days; she's not a huge experimental music fan, but fortunately she's indulgent enough not to mind when my buddy Mike and I want to head up to Denton or over to Dallas to partake of the offerings at Molten Plains or The Wild Detectives (both of which have Ernesto's fingerprints all over them), and more recently at Full City Rooster. But I digress. This was a welcome opportunity for us to absorb some extraordinary cultural experiences.

In preparation for the event, we re-watched the HBO series of Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer, and I started to re-read the novel -- which I first read after viewing the series. It seemed to me then that the screenwriters had taken some liberties with Nguyen's text, some of which (particularly casting Robert Downey, Jr., as all of the Caucasian characters) were to my liking, others less so. 

Arriving at TWD for Nguyen's talk, I was struck by the number of Asian people in attendance -- probably the most I'd seen anywhere since the L.A. Cambodian rock band Dengue Fever played at Lola's in Fort Worth and a bunch of Khmer kids from Haltom City came down to check them out. I talked to a couple of women from Austin, who'd driven up because "he had an event in Austin that was $300, which the Vietnamese community can't afford, but he told me he had one in Dallas that was free."

Nguyen responded to smart questions from the TWD book club, then took questions from the audience. He alluded to the writer's life of "misery and suffering," and the fact that "no one cares" (which can be liberating as well as humbling for the aspiring creative). In reference to the changes the TV writers made to The Sympathizer, he pointed out that a visual medium provides the opportunity to depict elements and aspects of the story that wouldn't be possible in print, and also to make the story "more meta," particularly in its depiction of the "film-within-a-film" The Hamlet, making the novel's critique of US propaganda more cartoonish and burlesque-like. 

You could tell Nguyen teaches from the way he was able to craft a coherent response to any question he received. He also spoke about Asian-American identity being a product of racism, and the continuity between US military adventures in East Asia (the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia) and those in Southwest Asia since 2001, as well as the continuity between the American myth of the ever expanding Western frontier and Israeli colonization and genocide in Palestine. His words about "solidarity and kinship" between East and West Asian Americans hit home particularly hard. I'll be digesting this talk for awhile yet.

Afterward, Ernesto told me Nguyen stayed for quite awhile, signing books and interacting with audience members. I queued up to get his autograph on my copy of The Committed, the sequel to The Sympathizer, then we headed over to Texas Theatre to hear The Historic Orchestra play a live soundtrack to the 1928 Expressionist film The Man Who Laughs. The orchestra comprised Jeremy Buller (Bosque Brown), Jesse Chandler (Pneumatic Tubes, Mercury Rev), Jason Reimer (History at Our Disposal), and Clay Stinnett (Ghostcar, Hoaries). While the silent film originally came with a synchronized musical score, the four musicians provided striking counterpoint, with rock dynamics, to the grotesqueries depicted on-screen. 

Saturday we missed the Sketches of Spain lunch because we had to feed and dose our old man cat (who isn't used to both of us being out of the house for extended periods), but we made it back to Texas Theatre in time to catch the screening of Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's Amores perros, surely one of the best-written films I've ever watched multiple times, and an interview with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who interweaves plotlines more skilfully than any other writer of whom I'm aware. Viewing the film again, I realized a decisive moment for one of the characters that I'd previously missed (no spoilers here).

Arriaga's interview was conducted in Spanish, with live translation provided using in-ear monitors. While the translator did their best, perhaps dealing with an unfamiliar dialect, and Arriaga occasionally switched to English, it might have been more effective to employ translation software like many opera companies use for superscript titles. 

Arriaga spoke about how there are two kinds of writers -- those who begin writing with a detailed plan in mind and those who follow the story -- and said that he is of the second kind. He revealed that some plot elements in Amores perros were inspired by events in his own life, and spoke of the differences between Mexicans and Americans, which perhaps explains why I find Amores perros the most impactful of the "death trilogy" he wrote for Innaritu (the other two films in the trilogy, 21 Grams and Babel, featured big-name American stars and had less of the earlier film's gritty, documentary-like feel).

The presentation of Valeria Luiselli, Leonardo Heilblum, and Ricardo Giraldo's Echoes from the Borderlands was a bit like seeing a play in workshop. For the past five years, the three have been recording sounds (including stories from people they meet along the way) and taking photographs along the US-Mexico border, starting in California and moving through Arizona and New Mexico. They've just started working in Texas, and author Luiselli says they'll probably continue their documentary work for "five to seven years." 

When complete, Echoes from the Borderlands will be a 24-hour immersive experience (because that's how long it would take to make the journey). What we saw was a one-hour abridgement of the 12 hours of material they currently have assembled. Composer Heilblum and Giraldo have been recording both binaurally (simulating the way humans actually hear) and quadrophonically at every location. The soundscape they've created includes sounds of nature as well as human activity, with the various sounds located in a realistic sound picture. Luiselli's text included discussions of forced sterilization of indigenous women, the influence of American eugenics on Nazi Germany, and the development of the intrauterine device.

We only caught a handful of events, but the festival also included conversations with authors Douglas Stewart and Bruna Dantas Lobato, Mircea Cartarescu, and Mariana Enriquez, a performance/interview with guitarist Phil Manzanera, and discussions of race and justice in America, the global fentanyl crisis, the power of indigenous language and culture, and Texas wildfires. All in all, it amounted to a veritable SXSW of ideas, with many free events as well as ticketed ones with prices ranging from $5 to $15. We'll be paying attention the next time Hay Festival comes to Dallas, and The Wild Detectives continues bringing cultural conversation (and left-of-center music) to the area on the regular.

We finished our the night with takeout from Benito's, which wound up providing us with breakfast as well as late dinner and a reminder why I always used to stop off there on the way home from the airport upon returning from out of town.

Dallas, 10.10.2024

Firelight Trio is the rubric for Austin saxophonist Joshua Thomson (Atlas Maior) performing with Oak Cliff siblings Aaron Gonzalez (bass) and Stefan Gonzalez (drums). Tonight they were at Full City Rooster in Dallas; Saturday night, Joshua and Stefan will be in Fort Worth at the Grackle Art Gallery with Drew Phelps on bass.

It was the first time I'd heard the Gonzalez sibs in a small group that had worked together previously since the days when they performed with their late father Dennis in Yells At Eels, and it was immediately noticeable how much more open the forms they played were than in that earlier unit. When I mentioned this to Aaron, he said, "If [Joshua] had brought a tune, we'd have played that," but it seemed to me that with Firelight, it's the interplay between the musicians that is the focus. 

All three players have fertile musical imaginations, and it was fascinating to observe how they spontaneously communicated as the set unfolded, each one taking the lead at different times, all of them listening and responding to each other's ideas, conducting a three-way conversation that ebbed and flowed, with dynamics that shifted from whisper level to explosive intensity. The Gonzalezes have been playing together since childhood, and their communication on the stand is as telepathic as one might expect from such a lengthy relationship. Watching Aaron and Joshua, you could see them taking time to listen and find their way into each other's ideas. Stefan has always played like a force of nature, but more and more lately I'm seeing him adopt a lighter touch and leave more space. 

The three made use of every tool at their disposal: Aaron switching between arco, pizzicato, playing with the bow's stick, tapping on the body of the bass; Stefan using sticks, brushes, and beaters, a series of inverted metal objects on his floor tom, rubbing sticks together, damping and releasing a cymbal after striking it to hear different resonances, occasionally unleashing his fast right foot (evoking memories of numberless versions of Yells At Eels theme "Document for Toshinori Kondo"); Joshua switching between mouthpieces to lend his alto either a brighter or darker tone, playing a wooden flute, whistles, and a Chinese multi-reed instrument called a hulusi. At one point, the confluence of Aaron's pentatonics and Joshua's skirling Near Eastern melodies conjured a kind of desert blues. The Gonzalezes' wordless vocalizations lent the music a primal, earthy quality.

I regret I'll miss the Grackle show because I scored weekend passes for my wife and myself to the Hay Festival Forum Dallas, but I'll be back at Full City Rooster on October 19, when Sawtooth Dolls (Paul Quigg and Gregg Prickett) perform live soundtracks to silent films.

Darius Jones' "Legend of e'Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye)"

It's Darius Jones' time.

His 2023 album fLuXkit Vancouver (its suite but sacred) was a critical favorite, making several end of year best-of lists and landing him on the cover of The Wire. Recently appointed to the board of directors at NYC's Roulette Intermedium, he begins teaching at Wesleyan University -- where Tyshawn Sorey and Anthony Braxton have also instructed -- this fall. More to the point, Aum Fidelity just released Legend of e'Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye), the seventh in Jones' nine-album Man'ish Boy cycle, the eponymous first chapter of which the label released in 2009.

I played the album on the computer this morning while I was making breakfast and was struck by the cry of Jones' alto on "Another Kind of Forever" -- a sound as close to human lamentation as I'd heard since Ornette in his '60s trio days. Jones is as singularly focused a musician as one can imagine; you can hear the intelligence and intention that inform his note choices: no rote glossolalia here, even when he unleashes torrents of notes and keening multiphonics. His collaborators in this venture -- bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Gerald Cleaver -- back him to the hilt, always supportive, not obtrusive. 

[For those who tuned in late -- myself included -- the albums in the Man'ish Boy cycle are a varied lot. The first two are trios: with Cooper-Moore and Ra Kalam Bob Moses on Man'ish Boy (A Raw & Beautiful Thing), Adam Lane and Jason Nazary on Big Gurl (Smell My Dream). Book of Mae'bul (Another Kind of Sunrise) features a quartet with NYC standbys Matt Mitchell, Trevor Dunn, and Ches Smith, while The Oversoul Manual uses no instruments at all; it's performed by the acapella Elizabeth-Caroline Unit. Le bebe de Brigitte (Lost in Translation) brings back Mitchell and Smith along with the dual basses of Sean Conly and Pascal Niggenkemper, and vocalist-pianist Emilie Lesbros. Raw Demon Alchemy (A Lone Operation) is, as its title implies, a solo venture.]

The compositions that make up Legend of e'Boi are concerned with Black mental health and healing from trauma, via therapy, community, and creative expression. Indeed, the project began with a prompt from Jones' therapist to "make a song for yourself." On album opener "Affirmation Needed," Jones states the sedately swinging theme, then subdivides time in a multiplicity of ways in his circuitous solo statement. "No More My Lord" is based on a 1948 Alan Lomax field recording of a prison song of transition ("I'll never turn back no more"), the rhythm section creating a static backing -- Lightcap's arco drone and Cleaver's drum clatter -- over which Jones testifies, then achieves transcendence. 

Jones employs a lot of negative space in "We Outside" as a way of depicting shattered humanity. Later in the piece, he hits on a note and worries it to death with staccato repetition before ascending to stratospheric heights. "We Inside Now" provides a gentle, lyrical respite. The album closes with "Motherfuckin Roosevelt," a pensive theme dedicated to the uncle who gave Jones his first saxophone. Here the rhythm section gets featured, with Cleaver backing a long Lightcap pizzicato solo, before Jones' meditative solo. This is powerful, emotionally resonant music that invites deep and repeated listening.

On My Father's Centennial, 10.4.2024

Too often when we write
About someone close to us,
We wind up writing about ourselves:
What they meant to us, 
How they affected us.

No shame there:
We all live in our own dreams,
No one else's.

But I want to try and think myself
Into his head, maybe more than in the past.

We must have seemed willful to him,
And ungrateful for the opportunities we had.
He was filial to his father,
Even though there were bad memories there.
(In his decline, when he couldn't
Reliably remember who I was,
The memory of his father's creditors
Beating down the door
Was one that recurred often for him.)

What did it feel like
To be 17 years old
When your country was attacked
By the land your parents came from?
(You could see the battleships burning 
From your front porch.)

What did it feel like
To be a 20 year old first lieutenant
Interviewing survivors of a firebombing
And an atomic bombing
On behalf of the government 
That sent the bombers?
(You could speak the survivors' language
Because you grew up speaking it.)

He must have had a deep inner life
When he was a young man.
The books he had in his library
(Dostoevsky, Eliot, Thomas Mann, Camus)
Pointed to that.
(I took some of them with me
When I left home for good.)

He was musical too, in his youth:
Played violin in orchestras.
At college, he was able to 
Discuss scores with music majors.

By the time I knew him, he
Seemed inarticulate and 
Socially awkward away from
The work that defined him.

As men of his generation did,
He got on the treadmill
Of making a living
And spent his years
Responding to circumstances
He didn't create
And couldn't have foreseen.

He was comfortable there.
He knew the rules
And how to play the game.
Home was harder.

I've lived some of that now
And think I understand him better
But still, when I took my wife
(This one, not the first one)
To meet him, he told me
As we were leaving,
"You don't have to come back here
When I die."

I guess there was some guilt he carried.
I have some of that, too.
In dreams, I'm always a failed college student
Who can't find the way home.

Perhaps I regret disappointing him
In ways I never realized
(Although I'm content now
With the life I've had).

But here's the thing:
No matter what we went through
Years ago, when we were grappling
With how to relate to each other,
He's still in my head every day,
In a positive way, I think.