- Well, I was whoring myself out yesterday on Facebook (not Twitter, for some reason) so I might as well do it here too. Heh.
The record I’ve been working on is now completely finished, it is called “HILLS RUN RED“. Mostly Electronic, though the break-beats and turntablism of Hip-Hop remain. A Western, built from 3 tracks and clocking in around 53 s0me minutes. It’s a long, draining album, with a narrative arc and even some Bob Dylan sampling. I know I can do better, and I will, but it’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done. I threw a single up on Soundcloud yesterday. It’s called “Dawn Rider”:
Will post again about it upon release!
- How I Finally Outgrew My Obsession With Marylin Monroe by Glenda Cooper
“Perhaps she was the perfect symbol for a girl in the process of growing up: the endless drama, life on the edge, the self-improvement, the search for Mr Right – and the Mr Wrongs. But however tragic her story and seductive her gaze, the Marilyn saga seemed suddenly rather narcissistic – another set of unseen photographs revealed, another conspiracy theory put forward, another re-evaluation, another anniversary. Perhaps as I reached the age she was when she died, we parted company. Now I couldn’t compare myself with her any more, and had to get on with real life alone.”
- My friend was telling me about this the other day: Vacant Detroit Becomes Dumping Ground For The Dead.
From the street, the two decomposing bodies were nearly invisible, concealed in an overgrown lot alongside worn-out car tires and a moldy sofa. The teenagers had been shot, stripped to their underwear and left on a deserted block. They were just the latest victims of foul play whose remains went undiscovered for days after being hidden deep inside Detroit’s vast urban wilderness — a crumbling wasteland rarely visited by outsiders and infrequently patrolled by police. Abandoned and neglected parts of the city are quickly becoming dumping grounds for the dead — at least a dozen bodies in 12 months’ time. And authorities acknowledge there’s little they can do.
“You can shoot a person, dump a body and it may just go unsolved” because of the time it may take for the corpse to be found, officer John Garner said. The bodies have been purposely hidden or discarded in alleys, fields, vacant houses, abandoned garages and even a canal. Seven of the victims are believed to have been slain outside Detroit and then dumped within the city.
You know, digging into all these old Westerns and looking at the history of the American West, the American Wilderness, has some context here. People find it fascinating and dangerous: the unexplored country of the unknown, terrifying and exciting in its desolation. Part of the reason why marshal law and crime ran so rampant was because of that desolation, it’s easier to kill someone who’s done you wrong in the middle of nowhere, rather than haul them to the nearest town where who knows if there’s even law enforcement, much less a jail. But I find vast blocks of inhabitable, abandoned urban waste and decay probably more frightening. This article explains that parts of the city aren’t even viewed by police anymore, they don’t even roll through. But even if they do, there’s so many crevices and nooks in an urban environment, people can basically do whatever they damn well please. Perhaps if this keeps happening, and happens to other major metropolitan cities, these deserted cities will become the new American West. Desolate but claustrophobic city-scapes, where anything goes and anyone who remains is forced to police themselves. Scary stuff.
-Sonny
