Musical Wednesdays: Sufjan and the National!

After reading this interview, I was a little worried about Sufjan Stevens' future.  It seems like he was going through a bit of a crisis, in which expectations are so high after you've released a masterpiece that it scares you out of doing anything else (see also: Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger).  I thought maybe he'd vanish, Jeff Mangum style, and become one of those legends who plays at someone else's show every six years or so.  Maybe his BQE project was the equivalent of Mangum's field recordings of a Romanian circus.

For me, Illinois was one of those records that I wanted to live inside of, with songs that haunted me long after I'd heard them.  The song Chicago was so definitive, so descriptive of my understanding of faith in America, that it was almost a hymn.  It stirs me the way Leaves of Grass does, or the way the Band's music does.  And music that has that effect on a lot of people can terrify its creator--so I can understand why Sufjan has acted like something of a hermit for the past few years.  But that interview, like I said, made me worry that he was going to go away.

But there's hope yet!  Sufjan is recording a new album, and he's working with the National!  There's not much more to say yet, but the fact that it's being recorded makes me happy.  And maybe since the National started out in Ohio, that state will be Sufjan's next subject.  Even if it's not an album inspired by one of the states, I am excited to see what Stevens will produce next.   

Friday Films: RIP Dennis Hopper

I meant to post this last week, so it's not exactly timely, but this video, from the DVD quarterly Wholphin, is how I'd like to remember Dennis Hopper. Sure, Easy Rider is an American classic and Apocalypse Now is a work of art...but this video, filmed in 1983, is Dennis Hopper strapping himself to the "Russian Suicide Chair" and igniting it. Here's a description by Hopper himself.

"You sit inside a circle of 20 sticks of dynamite. The explosion creates a vacuum, like the eye of a hurricane, inside. Dynamite won't blow in on itself. But if three in a row don't go off, you'll be sucked out and killed. Also, you can't raise your head above a certain level or it will be blown off. I asked a stunt daredevil named Ollie Anderson to set up my experience. I got into the middle and hoped like hell it worked. I had to hold my ears. I felt a little disoriented afterwards, but besides that I felt fine. I was alive."

Friday Films: Man on Wire

Like I mentioned on Monday, I recently watched the documentary "Man on Wire," about Phillippe Petit's tightrope walk between the Twin Towers. I didn't realize until later this week that it won the Oscar for Best Documentary, but now that I know that, I'm almost even more impressed. Not because it won the Oscar, but because as far as documentaries go, it's different from most that I've seen. What distinguishes it from other documentaries is its format: it's presented like a caper film.

The film opens with a shot of a calendar showing the date of "Le Coup," followed by a reenactment of Petit and his crew loading their vehicles, setting out toward the towers. It's all very fast-moving, the reenactments filmed like French New Wave films, cutting quickly to interviews with the participants looking back on the event. As soon as the filmmakers set up the central event, they jump back to its conception, Philippe Petit reading about the towers in a doctor's office in 1968, and then to his first major walk, between the towers of the Notre Dame cathedral.

It's really interesting to see the participants, now in their 50s or 60s, look back at their youths. They talk about how they knew what they were doing was illegal, but it wasn't mean, wasn't hurting anyone or doing any damage. It's all extremely innocent, and I think that's what the filmmakers intended. There's never a mention of the 9/11 attacks, but they're kind of in the subtext during the whole movie. From the moment they show the crew get into their vans to sneak into the building, your mind can't help but contrast it with the months of preparation and falsifying documents and training that would go into perpetuating a terror attack. It's strange that it makes you think about that, but I don't believe for a minute that it's accidental.

In the interviews with the participants, they talk about how Petit, when he saw the towers, knew that they were meant for him. They were built for him to walk between. So in their memories of the event, there's this undercurrent of sadness, which I took as some combination of nostalgia and a sense of loss for the towers themselves. The walk between was accomplished just once, and can never be done again. One of the co-conspirators actually begins to cry as he talks about it, and the effect is really moving and sets a tone for the rest of the fim.

The movie ends with a shot of Petit practicing walking in his backyard in Woodstock, NY. He's older now, but still incredibly talented. The rope across the yard is a long walk only a few feet off of the ground, and the final image is a kind of mix of memories: it's simultaneously the meadow Petit practiced in through his youth and the wire between the towers. The image of his feet on that wire lingers for a long time after the film ends.

Friday Films: Nikola Tesla, My Hero

I was going to post something else for Friday Films today, but I just learned that today is Nikola Tesla's birthday! As a way to commemorate him and have a film related post, I've decided to share this clip from Jim Jarmusch's Coffee And Cigarettes, in which Jack White shows Meg his Tesla coil.




Enjoy, and remember: whenever you plug something in, use your cellphone, or listen to the radio, thank Tesla.

Inaugural Post

Welcome to THE SHORT LIST, John Shortino's new blog. In the coming months, I'll be posting words and images relating to my writing, among other things. Stay tuned.

But for today, an eccentric I have taken a liking to lately:

JOSHUA NORTON, First (and only) Emperor of America.