I was always interested, but I never really pursued it any further than listening to Paper Planes about a bajillion times on YouTube. Something about her sound was just too brash, too harsh; her music is a sensory assault.
Lately though, I've been really digging into Kala and it's had a surprising impact on The Sleep Season.
--
Tribal digital is what I want to call her sound, and the sound of some other similar artists like Animal Collective or MGMT.
Despite M.I.A.'s tendency toward electronica, her music is heavily influenced by punk rock and traditional Indian, African and Aboriginal music. Lay that mix in the hands of Major Lazer's Switch, whose production gives the songs a sense of video-game narrative, and what you get is something that feels primordial, but also decidedly new and refreshingly relevant.
I can't say if that connotation is a self-conscious choice made by the artist or not, but M.I.A. doesn't often shy away from self-consciousness. The video for her new single XXXO seems to comment pretty self-consciously on social-media. You want me be somebody who I'm really not M.I.A. sings, autotune cranked up to the rafters. I can be the actress, you be Tarentino.
The video features M.I.A. framed by infinite telescoping YouTube players and glittering MySpace profile decorations.
Ten years ago, it seemed mind-blowingly cool that people would be able to comment in real time on music videos as they were being played on MTV. Now you can watch and comment on just about every music video ever made, whenever you feel like it.
There's a reason MTV doesn't play videos anymore. Social-media drive our culture.
There's a reason MTV doesn't play videos anymore. Social-media drive our culture.
As M.I.A. points out, social-media give people the ability to create and shape personae apart from the ones they've spent their entire lives cultivating in the analog world. That persona could be very different from who you are around your co-workers, family and friends, or it could be you to the letter; the important thing is that it's entirely in your hands, and people respond to that kind of freedom in very different, sometimes baffling, ways.
--
Ever since I got this idea that The Sleep Season would be a fictional memoir, I've had trouble placing the story in time.
Chuck has to live a full life, the arc of the trilogy demands it. If Chuck is roughly my age, he's going to live into at least the 2050's and I'm not sure I'm prepared to write Chris as a citizen of the 2050's. However, if I put Chuck's childhood too far back, I won't be writing about now.
Sometimes this time issue can be tricky enough to make me doubt the whole idea to begin with. I start to think Isn't the idea of the rock star is already antiquated? Anachronistic even? At the very least, it's evolved far past my vision of what I want Chuck to be. I have to find a way to unify Chuck and his surroundings, find a way to make him fit into the time and place that I want him to put him in.
As usual, conflict seems to the be the key.
Sometimes this time issue can be tricky enough to make me doubt the whole idea to begin with. I start to think Isn't the idea of the rock star is already antiquated? Anachronistic even? At the very least, it's evolved far past my vision of what I want Chuck to be. I have to find a way to unify Chuck and his surroundings, find a way to make him fit into the time and place that I want him to put him in.
As usual, conflict seems to the be the key.
According to some academic schools of thought, the very fact that I'm writing a novel is an anachronism to begin with. They say the novel is dead, that the memoir killed it and if memoir didn't, new media surely will. But some people say rock and roll is dead too, that the record industry is a crumbling monolith done in by the distributive freedom of social media.
In other words, there's a parallel between the rock and roll album and the novel and it says something about our cultural trajectory. I've just got to become brave enough and informed enough to comment on the potential fallout, then I'll be able to put Chuck into conflict with that potential fallout.
This will give purpose to the rock star anachronism.
If I go about it right, I think this is a theme that can help me place this whole story in time, bring my characters into focus and shape the thematic arc of the entire trilogy.
This will give purpose to the rock star anachronism.
If I go about it right, I think this is a theme that can help me place this whole story in time, bring my characters into focus and shape the thematic arc of the entire trilogy.
Dead Serious Writer Rule #18: Be an anachronism.
Source: http://deadseriouswriter.blogspot.com/2010/08/primitives.html
0 nhận xét: on "Primitives"
Post a Comment