Slowdive - Slowdive

 People need labels. They also like reflexive pejoratives for confining art within a limited but easily referenced realm without having to really experience it. According to some Slowdive were once the Cocteau Twins, then they were shoegaze and now they are heritage act. Slowdive were never (obviously) the Cocteau Twins. Shoegazing (or a lack of onstage performance) was also a deliberate means to differentiate a band from the flailing baby boomers, hair metal nonsense and disingenuous pop histrionics of the early 90s. (The monstrous was in the demonstrative.) Not to mention, ahem, a way of functioning guitar-effect pedals, which happened to be near the odd desert boot or winkle picker (the original shoegazer’s shoe of choice). Thankfully, though, Slowdive transcend the collective sneers chosen to imprison them, and as this new album demonstrates, the band is also so much more than just a heritage act.

 Slowdive the album, titled after the band as a contemporizing statement, is not an inherited tradition of providing slithers of sustenance to the sentimentality of middle age nor is it an exercise of warming up leftovers to feed a propensity for nostalgia. Slowdive the album is alive. It is a record that burns with the infectious joy of creativity. The joy of knowing your strengths and being able to build on the past while also, importantly, being able to look to the future and still create something beyond a scope previously imagined, like a form of magic.

 Oh, and what a beautiful sound Slowdive still make. The soaring guitars in many of the songs have such an emotive force. No other band can make their effects-pedal-trickery sound like the opening of the heavens and at the same time allow for an exhilarating projection into oneself with the bittersweet thrill of being alive. It’s a glorious soundtrack to the battles to feel and be felt, within and without, before many of us depart to our imagined but majestic Valhalla.

 Slowdive is also an album that transcends beyond its instrumentation. Songs marry words to these beautiful sounds to open up interior rooms for contemplation, whether it is (as Rachel and Neil sing) a room for thinking about love, no longer making time; sugaring the pill or just wanting to feel it. There are only eight tracks on this album and the economy of the riches, condensed and concise, only leaves you wanting more. Which is at is should be for a band who magically exist beyond their heritage and whatever lifeless word prisons made for them. Slowdive (the album) proves it.

Slowdive (the album) is available on May 5^th from Dead Oceans.

https://slowdive.bandcamp.com/album/slowdive

Christian Martius (2017)

Taking Pictures

There’s a man who works at the local store who takes photographs with his eyes. He moves his eyelids like they are garage doors. He will look you straight in the face while talking and take at least three or four shots. He can’t help it. 
          Another person once told me a way to remember to do a task, laid out in the physical world before you, is to stop, face the potential activity in question and blink at it as if you were a living camera. Just stand there in front of a wall that needs to be painted or a machine that needs to be fixed and blink. Try it, they said. I was assured to always remember to do the job, even if I did many others before, because there was a photograph of an unpainted wall or a broken machine in my head, taken only with my eyes.

My photographs are made with a little black box that catches the light. I’m not skilled or disciplined enough to use my body. I need an object between the world and me. Most of the time there's an overflow of misremembered memories and undeveloped futures, so I need that box to pull me out of those images and back into what is in front of the camera. Then I take a photograph.

Christian Martius (2017)

The Thing

When I think of relationships I think of balls made of elastic bands. To make one you have to start with a core object like a marble, or a golf ball, or a human being. Then you add your rubber bands, or the little moments of experience, which overlap each other and become entangled until a thing is made. It’s a simple but intricate creation that takes time. Time to make but also time to unravel.

Then you have this thing. It orbits and floats between two people, somewhere between two minds. One mind will notice the separate rubber bands while the other will only see the ball. But it’s still a ball made of elastic bands.

Then the day will come that the ball becomes a scattered collection of separate and discarded pieces. And the people who made the thing will ask the same questions.

“Do you remember the ball we made of elastic bands?”

“Do you remember all those threads being untangled and the thing being pulled apart?” 

“Do you remember the thing?”

And of course the people remember. Because somewhere between those two minds the elastic band ball can be whole again, and thought about with all the others.

Christian Martius (2017)

The End of the World Comes with Bad Poetry

The end of the world comes with a commercial.

The end of the world comes with a book describing the end of the world.

The end of the world comes with someone saying there were warning signs.

The end of the world comes with someone saying we should be worried.

The end of the world comes with a press conference.

The end of the world comes with marches and demonstrations.

The end of the world comes in words that pretend that there aren’t other words that better describe the end of the world.

The end of the world comes with a celebrity profile.

The end of the world comes with a money-off deal.

The end of the world comes with a debate on violence.

The end of the world comes with someone saying art will get better.

The end of the world comes with people’s rights being taken away.

The end of the world comes with someone believing things are better than they were before the end of the world.

The end of world comes because a country voted for it.

The end of the world comes on social media.

The end of world comes because no one thought the end of the world was possible.

Who will stop the end of the world?

Christian Martius (2017)

Anyone for Tennis?

Shot on film. No filter - December 2016.

Reflection on 2016

Shot on film in 2016.

2016 was terrible socially and politically. A year full of public loss, regressions, bigotry, idiocy, mendacity, complicity and contempt. It's easy to despair, both at the recent past and the possible future. Looking back, though, I feel it is important to acknowledge the good among the bad, the personal in the political, the community around you, the inspirations, the epiphanies, the creativity and those things done that made a difference. For me, a lot did make a difference.

Withdrew from a PhD: At the end of this year I withdrew from my PhD. From the beginning I have struggled with the pettiness and solipsism of academic culture but I have always loved reading, writing, researching and learning. This love carried me through for four years and I believed in the research I was doing. However, my work, philosophically at least, was based on a belief that humanity can be better than it is. I'm not sure if I believe that anymore. So, I withdrew, at least until I can find some meaning in the work. Otherwise what is the point?

Became a Researcher: Before stepping away from the PhD I took on a full-time research position advocating for LGBTQ seniors. This has been one of best decisions I've made. I'm employed to do good in the world, to help people and hopefully make a difference. The project I'm working on is also dependent on my skills as a writer and researcher, so I feel acknowledged, capable and full of potential, not just for myself but also for the contribution I can make. 

Started a Photography Group: A good friend of mine and I started a photography group called Analogue Arseholes (because we shoot with film in a digital age). Before long the group expanded to 18 members. We now have regular "AA" meetings. We share our pictures, set each other photography challenges, and have all been collectively inspired by the old magic of shooting with film. The lost art of analogue photography, the enthusiasm of the AA members and the work we produce and share has been a revelation.


Had an Art Exhibition: Didactic Panels was an exhibition of short stories and art pieces. The stories were mounted to look like didactic panels typically found in art galleries, but functioned in the role usually reserved for visual art, as the exhibition focus. In oppositional contrast the associated art was peripheral and contributory, like the informational plaques (didactic panels) found next to a painting or a photograph. Seeing the exhibition develop materially, from an idea into a real thing in the world, before my eyes was incredibly satisfying. As was watching people in the gallery stop and consider the stories in front of them.

Assisted a Film Class: One of the requirements of doing a PhD is being a Teaching Assistant in associated programs. This year I turned down my usual role at my program's university, took a chance, and looked for something different to do as I contemplated withdrawing from the PhD. At the same time I was offered an assistantship in a film class at another university. This change has also been incredibly gratifying, if only for the reason the class is directly associated with art.

So, in the midst of all the terribleness happening in the world I managed to find some meaning. I hope you did too. 

Christian
     

Black & White

My first time with black and white film.