Finally I am no one

This is a double post.

First, my fifteen minutes of fame are over. So be it. I'm happy for it to be over. I'm going to be famous again someday, but not because I was called out for bad fasion sense. It was fun, I enjoyed every minute, I love the clothes; but let's be honest, I have more to offer the world than to be a warning about matching belts with shoes.

My fifteen minutes came to an end not with the airing of the show, but the next day at a concert: the barback at the black cat club here in DC, after telling me why he couldn't give me a beer, pronounced with much certainty that 'I have seen you on TV'. I nodded, then asked him how he knew. He made an upward thrusting on his head and said "It's the cockatiel" in reference to my hair. So there it is. If I never get a book published or a movie made, I will be remembered for naming the faux-hawk haircut after a bird that is about as annoying as the hairdo. My place in history is complete.

Now, on to the important stuff: I saw Mum last night. If you don't know this lovely band from Iceland, check them out. I previously described them as being 'a band from outer space here to give detailed instructions to building an interrostier in sing-song form', but having seen them live for the first time I can describe them as being much closer to a religion. I got as close to God last night as I have ever been (without drugs), and being I'm an athiest, that's saying a lot. Watching them switch instruments (some of whish were xylophones, mellotrons and zithers) with unashamed earnestness, completely unawares of the audience around them, I beheld the beauty that is man. Never before had I witnessed this kind of edic-cum-nirvanic ode to the abilities of man before.

    The skill at which they coaxed sounds out of the ether left me dumbfounded. They bring music about as if out of the primordial ooze: first a chord strikes and holds the note, literally being the first thing man discovered from music. Then a drumbeat claws its way out of this ooze, crawling on all fours at first, before extra instruments come in, walking on two feet, but slump-backed, finally achieving uprightness 5 minutes into a song. What first appears random; the striking of a bell here, a random loop of record scratches there, becomes part of something grander when you sense that these notes, played once every 7 beats or 13, or 20, are part of a much greater loop of sound than previously allowed in your 4-4 beat rock song. Suddenly your in a song that could encompass a lifespan.

One cannot leave a show without feeling that they have witnessed something religious, that is, man (and woman) as close to God as God will allow. Angels weep, I shit you not.

On a final note, it's not just them, Iceland seems to produce this musik-as-Godhead phenomenon. Sigur Ros can build a cathedral with just one song as well.