Jersey punk receives the 2011 Polar Music Prize from Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf.
Patti Smith was awarded Sweden’s highest musical honor this past week.
Billboard reports:
The Polar Music Prize was first presented in 1992 and has gone to pop artists such as Sir Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, B.B. King, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and classical names such as Isaac Stern, Renée Fleming, José Antonio Abreu and Ennio Morricone.
Smith’s award was presented by one of her favorite authors, Sweden’s Henning Mankell. Speaking without notes, he credited Smith for inspiring women all over the world to write poetry and create music. He then read the citation, which lauded Smith for “devoting her life to art in all its forms” and for demonstrating “how much rock ‘n’ roll there is in poetry and how much poetry there is in rock ‘n’ roll.” Calling Smith “a Rimbaud with Marshall amps,” the citation said that she “has transformed the way an entire generation looks, thinks and dreams.”
In her acceptance, a visibly moved Smith had to stop for a moment to collect herself as she thanked her daughter Jesse Paris and son Jackson, as well as the musicians she has worked with for years, including “Lenny Kaye, who has played guitar by my side for over 40 years.” Smith also acknowledged the late Stig Anderson and “my late husband, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith,” guitarist for the rock band MC5.
“Receiving the prestigious Polar Music Prize is both humbling and inspiring, for it fills me with pride,” Smith told the audience at the Stockholm Concert Hall. “It also fills me with the desire to continue to prove my worth. I am reminded always how collaborative the music experience is and so I would like to thank the people, for it is the people for whom we create and it is the people who have given me their energy and encouragement for four decades.
No longer outside of society, punk’s elder stateswoman discusses her past, the present and the creative process with Stockholm journalist Jan Gradvall.
Over at Facsimile Dust Jackets you can find (and purchase) an incredible selection of scans of dust jackets from classic novels by Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K Dick, Doris Lessing, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Christopher Isherwood, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, Agatha Christie, Aleister Crowley, Dennis Wheatley, Robert Bloch, Len Deighton and many, many more. Have a look for yourself here.
Forget about your dashboard Jesus, get yerself a bobblehead bard.
Awesome six inch tall figurine of the king poet of the Beat generation, Allen Ginsberg. Comes with Uncle Sam top hat, glasses, beaded necklace, a groovy coat plus a CD of Allen live at the Knitting Factory in 1995! The CD includes five previously unreleased spoken word pieces. The perfect addition to your shrine to the awesomeness that is the Beats! Figure designed by Archer Prewitt of The Cocktails and The Sea and Cake!
Virginia Woolf put stones in her pocket, left home, and walked out into the River Ouse. It was March 28th 1941.
Drowning isn’t the easiest of deaths, it can take up to 7 minutes. We can pretend and romanticize it as much as we want, but it was not an easy death.
In January 1941, Woolf had dropped into depression, she wrote in her diary:
January 26th 1941
“A battle against depression…I think, of memoir writing. This trough of despair shall not, I swear, engulf me.”
Then 3 weeks before she took her own life:
Sunday March 8th 1941
“I intend no introspection. I mark Henry James’ sentence: observe perpetually. Observe the oncome of age. Observe greed. Observe my own despondency. By that means it becomes serviceable. Or so I hope. I insist upon spending this time to the best advantage. I will go down with my colours flying.”
Woolf fought. Woolf struggled. Woolf lost. Or, rather we lost. In a note to her husband Leonard, she wrote:
Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier ‘til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.
The fear of madness had always been there, and once described her nervous breakdown:
“My own brain -
“Here is the whole nervous breakdown in miniature. We came on Tuesday. Sank into a chair, could scarcely rise; everything insipid; tasteless, colorless. Enormous desire for rest.
“Wednesday - only wish to be alone in the open air. Air delicious - avoided speech; could not read. Thought of my own power of writing with veneration, as of something incredible, belonging to someone else; never again to be enjoyed by me. Mind a blank. Slept in my chair.
“Thursday. No pleasure in life whatsoever; but felt perhaps more attuned to existence. Character and idiosyncrasy as Virginia Woolf completely sunk out. Humble and modest. Difficulty in thinking what to say. Read automatically, like a cow chewing cud. Slept in chair.
“Friday : sense of physical tiredness; but slight activity of the brain. Beginning to take notice. Making one or two plans. No power of phrase-making. Difficulty in writing to Lady Colefax. Saturday (today) much clearer and lighter. Thought I could write, but resisted and found it impossible.
“A desire to read poetry set in on Friday. This brings back a sense of my own individuality. Read some dante and Bridges, without troubling to understand, but got pleasure from them. Now I begin to wish to write notes, but not yet a novel. But today scenes quickening. No ‘making up’ power yet: no desire to cast scenes in my book. Curiosity about literature returning; want to read Dante, Havelock Ellis and Berlioz autobiography; also to make a looking glass with shell frame. These processses have sometimes been spread over weeks.”
Even at its worst, Woolf’s desire for creativity, to create, to write, to survive, never weakened.
Monday October 25th (First day of winter time)
“Why is life so tragic; so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss. I look down; I feel giddy; I wonder how I am ever to walk to the end. But why do I feel this: Now that I say it I don’t feel it. The fire burns; we are going to hear the Beggar’s Opera. Only it lies about me; I can’t keep my eyes shut. It’s a feeling of impotence; of cutting no ice.
Here I sit at Richmond, and like a lantern stood in the middle of a field my light goes up in the darkness. Melancholy diminishes as I write. Why then don’t I write down oftener? Well, one’s vanity forbids. I want to appear a success even to myself. Yet I don’t get to the bottom of it. It’s having no children, living away from friends, failing to write well, spending too much on food, growing old. I think too much of whys and wherefores; too much of myself. I don’t like time to flap around me.
Well, then, work. Yes, but I so soon tire of work - can’t read more than a little, an hour’s writing is enough for me. Out here no one comes in to waste time pleasantly. If they do, I’m cross. The labour of going to London is too great. Nessa’s children grow up, and I can’t have them to tea, or go to the Zoo. Pocket money doesn’t allow of much. Yet I’m persuaded that these are trivial things; it’s life itself, I think sometimes, for us in our generation so tragic - no newspaper placard without its shriek of agony from someone. McSwiney this afternoon and violence in Ireland; or it’ll be the strike.
Unhappiness is everywhere; just beyond the door; or stupidity, which is worse. Still I don’t pluck the nettle out of me. To write Jacob’s Room again will revive my fibres, I feel. Evelyn is due; but I don’t like what I write now. And with it all how happy I am - if it weren’t for my feeling that it’s a strip of pavement over an abyss.
On March 28 2008, Patti Smith read a selection of interpretations from Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, creating an abstract impression of the writer. As Patti explained in an interview with Sean O’Hagan:
‘Virginia wrote The Waves for her brother, Toby. I think that’s part of the reason I chose to read from it. I feel very comfortable in those areas. I feel comfortable with her clawing her insides out to express her grief about her brother. I feel very comfortable when she writes about looking in the mirror and seeing the gaunt, greying face of her dying mother and also feeling strong and OK about that. Maybe that’s why I didn’t come to her work until late in life. I hadn’t gone though enough before to understand what she had to offer as a person and as an artist.’
Patti Smith is “waving to Virginia”, with accompaniment from her daughter, Jesse Smith on piano.
The film version of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel “The Rum Diary” is finally hitting the screen on October 28 after a long and tumultuous trip through development hell. The movie had been optioned by now-defunct production company The Shooting Gallery who never managed to get it off the ground.
On January 22, 2001, in a fit of frustration and anger, Thompson sent production executive Holly Sorensen the following letter:
Hunter S. Thompson
Woody Creek
HOLLY SORENSON / Shooting Gallery / Hollywood / Jan 22 ‘01
Dear Holly,
Okay, you lazy bitch, I’m getting tired of this waterhead fuckaround that you’re doing with The Rum Diary.
We are not even spinning our wheels aggresivly. It’s like the whole Project got turned over to Zombies who live in cardboard boxes under the Hollywood Freeway… I seem to be the only person who’s doing anything about getting this movie Made. I have rounded up Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Brad Pitt, Nick Nolte & a fine screenwriter from England, named Michael Thomas, who is a very smart boy & has so far been a pleasure to talk to & conspire with…
So there’s yr. fucking Script & all you have to do now is act like a Professional & Pay him. What the hell do you think Making a Movie is all about? Nobody needs to hear any more of that Gibberish about yr. New Mercedes & yr. Ski Trips & how Hopelessly Broke the Shooting Gallery is…. If you’re that fucking Poor you should get out of the Movie Business. It is no place for Amateurs & Dilletants who don’t want to do anything but “take lunch” & Waste serious people’s Time.
Fuck this. We have a good writer, we have the main parts casted & we have a very marketable movie that will not even be hard to make….
And all you are is a goddamn Bystander, making stupid suggestions & jabbering now & then like some half-bright Kid with No Money & No Energy & no focus except on yr. own tits…. I’m sick of hearing about Cuba & Japs & yr. Yo-yo partners who want to change the story because the violence makes them Queasy.
Shit on them. I’d much rather deal with a Live asshole than a Dead worm with No Light in his Eyes…. If you people don’t want to Do Anything with this movie, just cough up the Option & I’ll talk to someone else. The only thing You’re going to get by quitting and curling up in a Fetal position is relentless Grief and Embarrassment. And the one thing you won’t have is Fun…
Okay, That’s my Outburst for today. Let’s hope that it gets Somebody off the dime. And if you don’t Do Something QUICK you’re going to Destroy a very good idea. I’m in the mood to chop yr. fucking hands off.
R.S.V.P
(Signed)
HUNTER
cc:
Depp
Benecio
M. Thomas
Nolte
Shapiro
Here’s the trailer for The Rum Diary. It’s directed by Bruce Robinson based on his own screenplay. Robinson wrote and directed the fabulous Withnail And I, one of my all-time favorite movies. The Rum Diary is produced by and stars Johnny Depp who was close and very loyal to Thompson. These are good indicators that the movie may be a fine one indeed.
Robinson, a recovering alcoholic, was hit with a bad case of writer’s block while working on the screenplay for the movie. He jumped off the wagon and managed to kickstart his Muse by drinking a bottle of booze a day. I guess he needed to get into a gonzo frame of mind. Once the work was done, he immediately went back to his life of sobriety.
In a very revealing interview published in the Guardian this week, ex-Throwing Muses singer and solo artist Kristin Hersh admits that she hates music and the role it has played in her life:
“Yeah, I hate music. Everyone knows that about me. Even my kids hate music. When they’re watching a kids’ show on TV, as soon as a song comes on, the TV is muted.” She reconsiders. “Maybe hate is the wrong word. We can’t bear it. The intensity of good music is too much to bear. And bad music is so offensive that that’s also too much to bear. I’m in heaven when it’s good, but that doesn’t happen very often. And anyway, you don’t want to be crying over the breakfast table. I don’t want that life.”
She is wary of the romantic notion of a link between great art and mental illness. Maybe, she concedes, in certain circumstances. But in the end the sums don’t add up. “The disease is far more dangerous than the music is valuable.”
She mentions her friend, the US singer Vic Chesnutt, who sang songs of love and loss and who died from an overdose two Christmases ago. “The fact that it killed Vic, it’s not worth it for me,” she says. “I think he’d have been a better man without music. And, even if not, he’d be here. He was more precious to me than he was to himself. And I know that I play that role for people too. My husband has begged me to stop. I’ve tried and it doesn’t work. Vic didn’t even want to. I want to.”
Hersh was at the Edinburgh book festival to promote her memoir Rat Girl - you can read the whole interview here.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born today in 1890, the cult writer who has been described as the 20th century’s greatest practitioner of horror fiction. Lovecraft has influenced and inspired such diverse writers and film-makers as Stephen King, Sam Raimi, Robert Bloch, Alan Moore, Tim Burton, Neil Gaiman and Mark E Smith.
To celebrate Lovecraft’s birthday, here is Mark E Smith reading “The Color Out of Space”.
Originally recorded by the BBC in 2007 as part of series of tales for Christmas, Smith briefly explained his choice:
“I’ve been a fan of HP Lovecraft since I was about 17. I chose to read this story because it’s very unusual for him; it’s not like his other tales. They are usually about people who live underground, or threats to humanity – which I like as well – but The Color Out Of Space is quite futuristic.”
Smith’s reading makes Lovecraft’s tale sound like the lyrics to one of his songs for The Fall, which only adds to the tale’s eerie quality.
Variety called Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place “the counter-cultural equivalent of an archaeological dig—or maybe an acid flashback.” Sound about right. The documentary utilizes the legendary 16mm color footage shot by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as they rode across America during their infamous 1964 cross-country trip in the psychedelically painted bus dubbed “Further” (a “trip” vividly described in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test). Opening this Friday in New York and on August 12 in Los Angeles, Magic Trip was co-directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney and his long-time collaborator, Alison Ellwood. (It’s also currently available on Pay-Per-View)
This film footage is something that we’ve always read about, but that we’ve have seen very little of, usually just snatches here and there in various documentaries over the years. I always thought it was silent footage, but apparently not, so now we can actually hear the non-stop speedfreak jive of Neal Cassidy, captured for posterity and not merely described on the page. What’s sounds so cool about this movie (which I haven’t seen myself yet) is that the filmmakers opted not forego the route of having elderly burnouts repeating rote anecdotes about events they probably have little memory of in actual fact (especially this crew, they were tripping balls!). Instead they’ve made what they are describing as an “immersive” experience that tries to recreate, to the extent possible, what it was like to BE there when it happened. Along the way, aside from Kesey and motormouth Cassidy, the audience meets Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and the Grateful Dead, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, Ken Babbs and the other Merry Pranksters.
There is an interesting article about the making and history behind Magic Trip that appeared in the New York Times over the weekend. Charles McGrath writes:
In all Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, as his crew called themselves, shot some 40 hours of 16-millimeter film, but the project was never really finished. As Mr. Wolfe wrote, “Plunging in on those miles of bouncing, ricocheting, blazing film with a splicer was like entering a jungle where the greeny vines grew faster than you could chop them down in front of you.” Kesey showed all 40 hours unedited a couple of times and also hacked the footage up into various shorter versions before stowing the film cans in his barn, near Eugene, Ore., where they rusted away — until Mr. Gibney and Ms. Ellwood showed up.
Kesey was onto something similar to what we would now call reality television: scenes of people with odd names (Mal Function, Gretchen Fetchin, Generally Famished) getting stoned and behaving weirdly. After publishing the novels “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Sometimes a Great Notion,” he had by 1964 wearied of writing or so fried his brain with hallucinogens that he embraced what he saw as a brand new art form: a drug-enabled psychic quest that would document itself as it was happening. The famous bus — a psychedelic-painted International Harvester with a sign in front that said “Furthur” and one in back that warned “Weird Load” — was wired for sound, and there was a movie camera on board. With Kesey sometimes directing and sometimes just standing back and watching, the Merry Pranksters filmed one another and also their interactions with an uncomprehending public when, for example, Neal Cassady drove the bus backward down a Phoenix street as the Pranksters, stoned on LSD, pretended to campaign for Barry Goldwater for president.
This is an major-league, important part of American history that’s been unearthed here. I can’t wait to see this!
Going through old correspondence, I came across a collection of cards and letters from a personal hero - J G Ballard.
It’s always amazed me that Ballard took the time to respond to my daft letters full questions and queries he must have answered innumerable times. It said much about Ballard’s great humility and character.
The first, dated April 27 1993, was written on a postcard of Carel WillinkDe Zeppelin, the blue ink (probably a Pentel pen) has faded somewhat, but still visible are his kind words and enthusiasm for a short story I’d sent him, which he over-praised as “a powerful + original piece of work”, and his explanation of the biographical elements of The Kindness of Women:
‘...which is about my writing as much as my life - my life seen through the spectrum of everything I’ve written.’
During the 10 years of our intermittent correspondence, Ballard was always kind, gracious, encouraging and helpful - an example we all can learn from.
21/11/94
Dear Mr Gallagher,
Many thanks for your letter from LA - I think probably you should make the documentary about the city - I on the whole rather enjoyed the week i spent there some years ago - but then no one mugged me or shot at me on the freeway - part of the problem there have been too many films about LA on TV over the recent years.
Hand-scrawled missive from Hunter S. Thompson to William McKeen, the author of the first HST bio, Outlaw Journalist (1991). His assistant at the time told McKeen how to “translate” the sentiments:
That’s just his way of saying that he liked it.
The framed letter is now hanging in a place of pride in McKeen’s home.
