A bit of Directrix Transgressive:
God had bestowed the power of Communication on Micheal when he was very young, that is, he could understand the word of God as it manifested itself in every day happenings, like the other day when he was buying another fifth of Stolie's, he had opened the bottle and drank like only a little bit and then had tripped over the sidewalk causing the bottle to shatter and spill the sweet smelling clear liquid all over the cement, and he had realized then that this was God telling him to sober up, being as he, Micheal, didn't have any money left and couldn't buy any more. Most people would call this chance, but Micheal had the power of Communication, and so he knew that this was the divine creator reaching out through the clouds and making it absolutely impossible for him to continue drinking, as if the Creator himself had a vested interest in his own recovery.
Micheal had always assumed that this vested interest was because his own parents had named him Micheal, as in God's right hand man, Micheal the arch-angel, whom his parents had told him had always had an eye out for him, Micheal the person, like a guardian angel. Micheal the person wasn't so sure about Micheal the arch-angel's protection sometimes, but whenever he was unsure there came the voice of God through the clouds like 'hey, actually he is looking out for you and he just had to cause you pain for you to get it through your thick skull.' Micheal often thought of his own skull as thick, as to why he didn't understand things some times. Especially the voice of God, even though he had Communication. Like when his mother had died, he hadn't gotten the reason through his thick skull for some time, and then he had finally understood, but then had forgotten moments later, why it was necessary, his mother's death. This forgetting, he knew, was probably more due to the high blood-alcohol level he had at the time of understanding, and so it was lost in a black haze of swirling memory.
But now he heard the Communication again, but he wasn't really sure what it was about, the Communication, just that this moment right here that had been going on for some time, was another one of those attempts from the Almighty to get something through his thick head. Micheal was seeing through what he called the “Haze,” you know that dizzy feeling when you're drunk but not really like spinning around in circles dizzy, more like, well, a haze, or a fog that's really an emotional fog and all confused like what's really going on? And what Micheal was seeing through the Haze with the Communication was a boy, probably like half his age (Micheal was good with numbers, even in a stupor) running at top speed through his own favorite alleyway in the Travestere area in Rome, where he, Micheal, sometimes liked to sleep. Micheal scratched his beard as the boy passed, trying to figure out what exactly this particular Communication was all about, like why a boy maybe 20 years old was here of all places and why was he running, not like what was he running from but what was the deep embedded symbolism God had placed there for him to find, is what he means. Maybe it was another request for sobriety, which it seemed like God was giving him a lot of those lately, ever since he had realized that he didn't even have enough money to buy food, because of all the bottles he was breaking on the sidewalk, which bottles he had gone back to replace. And then again, when he had found that garbage cans could actually be a decent source of food in a difficult time and that it was possible to dislocate your foot to make people feel bad for you and give you money the Communications from God had like tripled, and Micheal had no way to account for this sudden increase in interest in him from a God that usually didn't seem to Communicate all that much, to him, even though his life had been a kind of roller coaster of awful things, some worse than eating out of trash cans and so forth. And it was amazing what people threw out, trash cans could be a good source of vital foods. Once he even found a brand new saran-wrapped steak in the trash can of a Whole Foods back in America.
Micheal suddenly noticed that the boy was gone, like a lot had happened while he was just sitting there thinking and he hadn't even noticed it happen. And by this point Micheal's brain was so addled that the only thing for it was another sip of industrial strength vodka, like real European high proof vodka, and that didn't really make him feel better but it at least made him stop wanting another sip, which was one less concern for his addled brain. One of the other concerns that refused to go away was this really weird memory about American football, like being in the crowd at a game in December with the freezing winds and the snow that was really almost just really cold rain, and the guys on the field pummeling each other, and the ball flying out from the huddle like some kind of magical force compelled it, and like he, Micheal, had no idea why this memory decided to embed itself so firmly in his mind especially right now when he was supposed to be trying to decode God's message to him about the boy who had run through his alleyway. Like as in, this seemed to him a strange diversion from God's message, like maybe his brain didn't want to really come to terms with what the running boy Meant, deep down, like some kind of Freudian shit, you know, which 'shit' Micheal had studied once, in school, back in America, only now the memories were faded like a night of boozed up celebrations, and Micheal thought maybe if he were only sober the memories would come right back and then things would start to make sense. But it seemed like whenever he tried, to be sober that is, he would somehow end up with the bottle in his hand and say well just one sip and then the bottle would be gone after that one little sip and maybe he'd think the bottle had like smashed on the sidewalk but there it'd be still in his hands and God would be telegraphing him all sorts of messages but by that point he'd be blacked out and not understanding much of anything, let alone cryptic Communications from God.
And so then there was the incident of this boy running away, and no one chasing him, Micheal suddenly realized, like he was maybe running from something that was more hypothetical in nature, like as in, not physical. And suddenly from only God knew where, a black nightmare feeling rose up in Micheal and totally consumed him and he stared up in wide eyed terror that he couldn't express, and that was what made it so terrifying, was that he couldn't Communicate it, and it was like he was entirely trapped inside, and it all had something to do with this boy who had run through his alleyway, running from something that wasn't really there, like he, the boy, hadn't really been caught in the act of theft but he thought he had been, and here was Micheal, trying to speak aloud what the real terror was but finding himself mute, like a dream he had once had where there was a monster trying to swallow his youthful naked body painfully and slowly (the monster's throat had been lined with teeth) and all he had to do was call out for help but what came out was a series of pathetic baby noises and whimpers, and what he was feeling now was like that only it was in real life and not in his dreams, and that made it all the more horrifying because dreams weren't supposed to come true, and where was Micheal, the arch-angel? and he felt the tears in his side from the monster's teeth, just enough to cause unbearable and inexpressible pain (made more painful for the whimpers) but not enough to kill. The stars were out though, he noticed.
Radiohead. The soundtrack to There Will Be Blood certainly pushes the boundries of art and soundtrack, written by Radiohead talent and possibly the genius behind the band, Johnny Greenwood.
from there before reading any more I have to say), I have a feeling that these gimmicks are going to get old real fast. Not to mention how distracting they are from the music itself, which is where all the attention ought to be. With In Rainbows, the big splash was that you could name your price for the music, a commentary on illegal downloading yadda yadda, and what was a solid-but-not-their-best album got lost under a slew of commentary on the marketing gimmick. I buy all my own music, or get it via Microsoft subscription, because I respect artists and the hardships of creation. I feel anyway that the theft of music has died down considerably, which makes the message of the gimmick all that much more transient and paranoid.
All this has served to make the album itself truly "invisible," like Thom Yorke shaped into my pocket (Cf Lotus Flower), and only solidifies my worry that Thom Yorke is an ass.
show signs of it, a lack of luster that isn't even present on the slow Amnesiac, a hopelessness and depression that has hung over their music since Hail to the Thief, only in King of Limbs that depression is hard to get around. Even Kid A had the sense to throw in the fist pumpers "National Anthem" and "Idioteque" and In Rainbows had the "Body Snatchers" to get your butt out of your chair. But King of Limbs is so subdued that listening to it's practically approximating REM sleep.
Kid A immediately shook me into modern music, stripped me down and made love on a December afternoon, and I'll forever remember it as my first time. King of Limbs might not be the passionate lover that Kid A was, but perhaps it's the old friend that Paul Simon sang about, who "sat on the park bench like bookends, newspaper blown through the grass..." something that you don't quite recognize at first, but one that lasts. A little melancholy, but meaningful. I won't know just yet, but what glimpses I've got into the album makes me wonder, will it?
start to walk down that staircase, think to yourself, I don't want to see what's down there, I don't care about my wife, and I'll take my chances with the fog on the streets above. That's where the gameplay is - infinite zombies await your presence where you can fight to your heart's content. But then there is that part of you that is still worried about that staircase, still concerned about descending into that hellhole, and is in fact still descending it, as it gets longer and longer without an end, and like a kind of neurosis, your mind will be trapped by it, unable to leave because when you turn around you discover no way to return to the world above, that the only path outward is through because the darkness has you - the passing of time, and the consuming need to see the bottom, the darkness hungers for your curiosity, and the moans call out to you now, rather than repel, and then the only life left to you will be to return to the staircase without reserve, and brave its depths.
