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#Post#: 225--------------------------------------------------
TWEEDLES! (Project of the Week for 9th of January)
By: moleshow Date: January 9, 2017, 4:30 pm
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CLOWN!! CLOWN!!
as per usual, my thoughts on it will eventually appear here.
#Post#: 226--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (9th of January): TWEEDLES!
By: Meisekimiu Date: January 10, 2017, 1:48 pm
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Tweedles! This album was my first taste of "modern" Residents
music. It wasn't the most recent thing that came out, but I
think it was one of the most modern "normal" albums that The
Residents released that had a Wikipedia article at the time.
(The Bunny Boy and Talking Light were not really good for me
just getting into The Residents... The Bunny Boy had its lack of
the entire video series being archived, and The Talking Light
had covers of other Rz music. Also, for some reason, I hadn't
actually even heard about TL until around the time the WoW show
was wrapping up in Europe.) So I decided to listen to it to get
an idea of where the band has been since those early albums.
I'm not a super big fan of this album. I like it, don't get me
wrong. I think the tracks themselves are beautiful... some of
the most beautiful music on a Residents albums. I just don'r
really like the lyrics and overall concept of the album. It's a
bit conceptual and a bit shocking, but to me, the album isn't
conceptual or shocking enough. I feel like there should just be
a little more to it. Maybe Grandpa Gio was right, and if they
had removed the clown imagery from the cover, the surprise at
the end of the album would have been better. One of my favorite
parts of a story is, usually near or during the climax of the
story, when the story suddenly drifts off in a direction that no
one could have seen coming. In movies or video games we see tons
of promotional advertisements that give away enough so when we
actually experience those works, we're already a bit familiar
with it. But no advertisement is going to reveal those precious
moments in the story where the audience thinks "wow... how did
we even get here?" By the time I play a new Zelda video game or
whatever, I've seen plenty of video of the game, but I always
approach the final level with anticipation thinking "what could
be at the end?" and always being excited by this feeling of "I
never could have guessed we'd end up in this situation!"
Tweedles doesn't really have that feeling to me. It barely feels
like it has a story at all to me simply because I know from the
start it's about a sexual predator, who is at least some kind of
metaphorical clown. God in Three Persons doesn't give anything
away and starts off fairly normal. I still feel kind of shocked
by where it goes by the end.
Anyway, the album is still pretty great. I love the use of
language in it too. The spoken words seem to have extra power to
them in this album, especially in "Mark of the Male", which I
just realized might be some sort of self-referential pun. The
album will always have a soft spot in my heart since I listened
to it so early on when I first discovered The Residents.
#Post#: 227--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (9th of January): TWEEDLES!
By: moleshow Date: January 10, 2017, 5:18 pm
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interesting take on it, meisekimiu!
for me, Tweedles! was an album that at first, i absolutely COULD
NOT get into. i heard Mark of the Male, and the lyrics with the
cover.. it was all just a HUGE turnoff for me. but when i
listened to it in full, it actually clicked kinda nicely.
the complaints about the cover never really resonated with me,
honestly. when that part IS explained, it's kind of an "aah, ok"
moment. ot at least it was for me.
what i dig about this album is that the music is affected by the
circumstances in which it was created and the concept is a
subdued one. the idea of a "vampire" that feeds off of the
feelings of others but also believes that anyone who would stoop
so low as to love him is not worth his love is one that really
works for me.
i have sort of a fascination with the psychology of this
character, because that is wild. in the "story" section for the
track Dreams, he describes some interesting phenomenon where
when he recalls his sexual endeavors, he does not see himself.
in the act of dissociating from his acts, he can also
disassociate from himself. throughout the album, he paints a
vivid picture of the way in which he conceptualizes himself, his
lovers, and his actions. what he describes comes across as being
based in the fact that our beautiful baby clown boy here has a
hole in his personhood. a gaping void in his identity.
[quote]"My memories are missing me
My memories are missing me
I disappeared without a trace
Like a sympathetic face
Inside a swarm of bees"[/quote]
[quote]"I mean ...I don’t HAVE any values ...I just AM ...and I
just DO."[/quote]
[quote]"I listen to my lover laugh as she defines me"[/quote]
what he seeks out in sex is himself. in an attempt to make up
for what is missing elsewhere, he seeks out whatever feels like
it will fill that hole. it would seem that some part of him is
unable to deal with or confront the horror of the
objectification and use of people that follows this, and thus he
removes himself from the memories of his actions. which brings
me to the key point of his personality: he needs. he needs
desperately, constantly, aggressively and childishly.
[quote]"I want ...I need ...and so I take. I take from those who
would take from me - I’m just a little better at it ...just a
little better at it ...a little better ...better."[/quote]
he conceals this need with the idea that his need is justified
by how he "knows" that the people around him would take from
him. and this also reveals that his need will fundamentally
never be truly dealt with in his current pattern of behavior. in
Shame on Me, he behaves in a way contrary to this, because his
fear of being honest with people about himself is a fear of the
people he uses being able to truly see him. he projects the
image of someone "cunning" and "cutthroat", and his true self
doesn't seem to really be that way. he is truly best described
as a man built in fear, need and confusion. the person that lies
within him is afraid, so he conceptualizes his projected self as
a predator. as long as he can imagine and characterize the world
around him, his life, as a hunt, that is something that he can
win. in a scenario involving predators and prey, the only one
that wins is the one that doesn't get eaten. because his
projected, idealized self does not match up with what lies
beneath, its entirely possible that he perceives himself as
simply not there. his inability to confront and accept his
actual personhood translates into him simply not perceiving it
at all. he cannot cope with it, and thus believes it does not
(and cannot) exist.
in the text for the track, Forgiveness, he almost blatantly
shows his fear of dealing with the person hiding within himself.
[quote]"...how can anyone actually believe that stepping on a
crack could have any effect on anything, except maybe a few ants
on the sidewalk, but how could you not think it? And how could
you not feel responsible, on some level ...how could you?
We are all responsible for each other, aren’t we? (How can I be
saying this?)"[/quote]
he doesn't want to believe that he can care, because that is
vulnerability. the risk of ever being vulnerable is that in any
moment where honesty is present, rejection can follow.
near the end of the album, he displays layers of performed
identities (in Brown Cow, where he mentions the "real" him and
the "dream" him) and various walls of personal defense going up
and being torn down. Keep Talkin' is all defense. Shame on Me is
all honesty, although there is no happy result that comes of it.
the consequence of his performed identities and concealed self
become clear- he is alone because he was afraid of being hurt.
his clown persona is an interesting one, though. it would seem
that he is performing an aspect of his true self and concealing
it as an identity that can be assumed and removed. and in Susie
Smiles, the end becomes unsure. we, as listeners, cannot know
whether or not his honesty did anything for him. that unsure
note is a strange one to end an album on, but i like it!
i give it a Yes.
#Post#: 228--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (9th of January): TWEEDLES!
By: CheerfulHypocrite Date: January 12, 2017, 12:42 pm
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Henri Coanda International Airport has had a VIP Lounge August
1969, when President Nixon of the United States visited Romania.
Coanda is well served by tannoy and this is how we arrive to our
dreams. The dreams of Bucharest were, largely, built by Cezar
Lazarescu, and landing in them, via the Orchestrations of the
Film Orchestra of Bucharest, is assisted by driving past The Ion
Luca Caragiale National Theatre. Where there are lots of Clowns.
Tweedles seems to be entirely oneiric: the residence of strigoi:
the Vampires whose power is to drain the vital essence. Not the
vanished Vampire of Demons Dance Alone. This is a Vampire with a
full and disturbing existence.
The Narrator has the same frenetic hysteria as Voice of
Midnight. But this is a Voice inside a head. Brutally honest.
Yet, not really telling the full story. The Narrator refers to
the film 'Imitation of Life' - the story of a Black Woman
passing as a White Woman - and dismisses it as kind of shitty
but a good title. The Narrator pretends to be telling the
Listener but seems to be seeking to justify Himself to Himself;
or, perhaps his Brother.
The Narrator gives the money shot, shame on him, by revealing a
clown name of THE GREAT TWEEDLES: the Narrator and his kid
brother used to call their penises their tweedles. Which gives a
retrospective understanding that you have no idea who the
Narrator is. Tweedle-dee or Tweedle-dum. Which is the Tweedle
talking? Tweedle is an older English word and dum and dee
signify two things or persons nearly alike, differing only in
name. The word was coined by in 1725, by the Manchester poet
John Byrom (1692-1767). In the satire, "On the Feud Between
Handel and Bononcini," tweedle was used to signify "to sing",
and "to whistle". The two whistlers - Handel and Bononcini -
competing for the patronage of the Monarchy. The -dum and -dee
perhaps suggest low and high sounds respectively and this was
used by Charles Dodgeson in Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis
Carroll. Where the conversation, in chapter four, is revealing.
[quote]
THEY were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the
other's neck, and Alice knew which was which in a moment,
because one of them had "DUM" embroidered on his collar, and the
other "DEE". 'I suppose they've each got "TWEEDLE" round at the
back of the collar,' she said to herself.
They stood so still that she quite forgot they were alive, and
she was just going round to see if the word "TWEEDLE" was
written at the back of each collar, when she was startled by a
voice coming from the one marked "DUM".
'If you think we're wax-works,' he said, 'you ought to pay, you
know. Wax-works weren't made to be looked at for nothing.
Nohow.'
'Contrariwise,' added the one marked "DEE", 'if you think we're
alive, you ought to speak.'
'I'm sure I'm very sorry,' was all Alice could say; for the
words of the old song kept ringing through her head like the
ticking of a clock, and she could hardly help saying them out
loud:
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle!
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel!
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.'
'I know what you're thinking about,' said Tweedledum; 'but it
isn't so, nohow.'
'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might
be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.
That's logic.'
[/quote]
Which has echoes of Arf and Omega. Twins engaged, constantly, in
an endless battle. Arf and Omega's story - from Atomic Shopping
Cart Battle to the Nightclub Knife Fight - is neither the first
nor the last use of twins by the Residents. Much like the
conjoined twins of God In Three Persons. Unlike God In Three
Persons, the Narrator of Tweedles is not concerned with the
ambiguity and fluidity of sexuality - the substance of
Aristophanes's Speech from Plato's Symposium - but with
something much more sinister.
The Narrator is supposed to be a Vampire. Not a simple blood
sucking Hollywood Bela Lugosi but Strigoli Mort: a dead strigoli
who returns to weaken his family until they die. The strigoi can
be a living man, born under strict conditions. Being the seventh
child of the same sex in a family; who leads a life of sin; die
unmarried… …by execution for perjury... ...by suicide; die
having been cursed by a witch. Which are all things that The
Narrator can be seen to be in the process of doing. The life of
sin is a constant narrative refrain; but, this is only sin if
there is moral authority and the Narrator make it clear
[quote]
I mean ...I don’t HAVE any values ...I just AM ...and I just DO
...and I DO WELL.
[/quote]
Much like the Dum and the Dee of the Tweedling of Lewis Carroll,
The Narrator makes everybody else pay. For a void. Which is
where all of the smart references to Arisophanes or Carroll or
Vileness Flats gets us to. A void: avoiding - like Georges Perec
- the one thing that would make everything different. In the
case of Perec it would be the letter 'e': an entire novel
without a single use of the most common letter; in the case of
The Narrator it might be Marie - whose Loss of Innocence haunts
THE GREAT TWEEDLE with the knowledge that it was not he but a
Brown Cow - Boo Who? - who took away her innocence from THE
GREAT TWEEDLE. Forever placing her corruption beyond his power.
The kind of curse only a witch could cast. The Death of the
Narrator will, with grim inevitability, transform him into a
Vampire. A Strigoli. The THE GREAT TWEEDLE is powerless to
prevent it. The horror of being powerless despite being the most
powerful being he knows.
Which is woven into a musical soundtrack that dwells upon hand
clapping games, backwards voices - how else to summon the dead -
and a kind of appreciation of the anthropological mythology that
The Residents have developed. Did the Residents really need to
travel to the Hunedoara in Transylvania to record: perhaps they
did merely to ensure that they could be insincere.
[quote]
Something insincere but sweet
Making mildly sucking sounds
[/quote]
They know they are drawing on their mythos - snatches of tunes
that might be, like some Third Reich 'n' Roll for the avante
garde - be a definitive critique of everthing done before Demons
Dance Alone. It really is not just storytelling with an
orchestral accompaniment but an entirely new thing. Telling true
stories and disguising them as lies. Somehow, forensically, The
Narrator is not simply a Vampire feeding but an incubus and
succubus carrying out the dicates of a more base nature.
The incubus is a male demon, utterly dependent on the succubus.
The incubus is named for the incubo - the actual nightmare
induced by the demon that lies upon the sleeper. At night the
succubus comes and has sex with sleeping men. This is a ruse to
collect the vital fluids of the sleeping man. The succubus then
transforms into an incubus and has sex with sleeping women. Thus
explaining the unexplained pregnancies. Thus explaining
nocturnal emissions.
The incubus and the succubus are the Lilin, the Lilith demons of
Mesopotemia. Not actually real vampires. Not the demon but the
offspring of the Demon.
Which is where Shame on Me leads to. The possibility is that the
Narrator is merely the offspring, the creation of the parents. A
mother who, now dead, never approved and a father whose drunken
abuses created a kind of shadow of the strigoli. Just like
Casanova whose often complicated and elaborate affairs with
women made his name a synonym for sybaritic debaucher. Not
really even capable of admitting if he is Tweedledee or
Tweedledum. Not able to do anything other than offer a
complicated mask of sex and distractions from what may really be
going on.
[quote]
the goofy sense of humor
That you never lose
Even though your drunken daddy
Loved you like a bruise
[/quote]
It is not quite the confession it seems.
[quote]
all eyes are on the center ring ...he stands alone in a
spotlight ...and sings.
[/quote]
The confession is not the happiness or sadness. The voices
slithering in and out of the background are not quite a collage
of popular culture that Third Reich 'n' Roll achieves and more a
collocation of evasions from the real admission. Tweedles knows
that his entire life has been avoiding what he genuinely
desired. The vampiric drain was not of the endless bodies he
fucked but his own essence. His endless incubation and
succubation benefits nobody but the story telling. Tweedles
knows who the real power is in this relationship and it is not
him, as The Narrator, but the Residents as Authors.
Which is where the Film Orchestra of Bucharest, swelling in
front of the Residents, permits Tweedles to be more than simply
a weird or a controversial production. Tweedles is a complicated
layering of previous works into something new. Not a mashup, not
a remix not a new direction but a Wake for all their previous
work. Not exactly a collaboration and not exactly a sequel. More
an exorcism. With snatches of voices hinting at chanted rituals,
lurking around the percussion. Tweedles is not simply about a
sexual predator but about the eclectic musical habits of the
Residents.
Imagine, for a moment, the Residents without theft from the
greats. No Third Reich 'n' Roll no guitars, prepared or being
slightly wrong, or piano as percussion in the manner of Steve
Reich or string sections bending around discords to find
something on the other side. Forgetting the story of the liar
Tweedles, and you find the music is gleefully plundered from
themselves. Not Hey Jude mashed with Sympathy for the Devil
decades before there was a name for it but gleefully taking Mark
of the Mole and making it Mark of the Male. Changing a single
letter. Making the tiniest diversion to achieve the greatest
affect. Affect. Not effect.
It is a theatre of music. Not quite the soundtrack to a film and
not quite the script for a play. It is a twilight. A Three Ring
Twilight of the Gods.
#Post#: 229--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (9th of January): TWEEDLES!
By: moleshow Date: January 13, 2017, 8:17 pm
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other things that were discussed outside off-site, all
compiled..
-there's some elemental symbolism going on in the album, where
the titles of the Tabasco tracks are relevant.
-his presented self may have entirely manufactured aspects of
his life. it may or may not be true that Tweedles has a brother.
"His mother hating his lifestyle and his father "loving him like
a bruise" and the absence of any meaningful narrative about his
brother suggests his entire persona is protecting him against
his early years."
-he is entirely comprised of his interactions with other people,
in terms of his presented self.
-it can possibly be said that his sexual experiences are both an
effort to repair and to harm his true self. but since those
experiences require his true self to be present, he removes
himself from those situations, because he cannot bear to be
vulnerable. but it would seem as if he conceptualizes this as
not an act against himself, but an act against someone else. it
is a blow in the direction of his true self from his presented
self, since the act aligns with the desires and perceived
motivations of the presented self.
-"His rampant hypersexuality is a protection against ever having
a physical experience - sexual or not - which connects him to
other people. For that to happen would be to acknowledge that
other people can have an affect."
-referring to the bit about the "tar baby in the sun"... that is
his vulnerable, early self which is the one he refuses to face
above all... because it is him, and because it is vulnerable.
-he sees Marie and his vulnerable self as both separate people
and he conceptualizes them in different ways. he disassociates
from himself. "It is not that strange as a form of dissocation.
People with dissociative personality disorders can often see
themselves as being both over there as a person doing a thing
and over here as a physical body. Which, depending on attention,
allows being here then there or both or even neither.
Dissociative disorders are disciplined, not random." in terms of
how it seems like there is some trauma he is trying to
desperately keep hidden, the disassociation makes total sense.
-"Then his mother, in dying, is a form of ugliness... he evades
actually saying she was mortal. Paralleling her death to the end
of a relationship and so making it "voluntary". As if she chose
to die because that was something to do."
-if each relationship is an attempt to repair himself. it can be
said that each time he fails to find someone who can fix him, he
must keep himself from becoming attached. if he fails to detach
in time, he becomes vulnerable and subsequently could become
more easily hurt... reinforcing the need for someone to fix him.
"Which presumes that he wants to be fixed. He might actually
want to serially reproduce the experience that broke him.
Through intent or ignorance he could be amplifying the need to
be fixed but sabotaging it every time."
#Post#: 375--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (9th of January): TWEEDLES!
By: moleshow Date: April 20, 2017, 12:21 pm
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OLD TALK ^
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NEW TALK v
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