Schnipper’s Slept On
- story THE FADER
Each Tuesday, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper highlights an underappreciated recent release he thinks we need to know about. This week it’s Black Eyes’ Cough. Listen to “Commencement” below, buy Cough here and read about it after the jump.
The other day someone asked me if I was going to keep writing my zine and I told him I have some of a new one written, but that it’s difficult because I already have this column and, sometimes, I like to go other places than the recesses of my own mind. Last week my friend Daniel did a video (that 152 of you even watched) for the column and I wrote about talking to him and listening to music. It wasn’t difficult to write. It was nice. I wrote a column about two seconds of a No Age song and art and abilities and effort and it was like, What are you talking about? But that is what my head is thinking all the time. I used to be surprised when people didn’t think like that. I thought everyone did. I see someone with a nice watch I think about them at the jewelry store. Did they bring someone with them to help them pick out? Or maybe they got it as a Christmas gift? Actually, he looks Jewish. I wonder if he is all Jewish. First generation immigrant? Maybe the watch is an heirloom? No, the leather doesn’t look worn enough. Then maybe it was replaced. Do you think he was nervous about letting the jeweler take such a precious heirloom and replace the band? This then reminds me of a panel in Bottomless Bellybutton which reminds me of when I read a lot of Virginia Woolf in college which reminds me of when I tried to transfer to Wesleyan after my freshman year of college (I was waitlisted undergrad) and how I didn’t get in transfer and how I would have gone if I had and how I am really happy I did not leave George Washington even if those first two years were a struggle in a variety of ways and then I’m thinking about how I never really told anyone about trying to transfer and I then I am like, Why is it different if I write it down? But it just is and then I am bummed. Why is everything a bummer?
I’m going to the beach on Saturday I hope. I need to get some sunscreen. Daniel is really tall, I wonder if you spend more money on sunscreen when you are tall because you have more surface area to cover. It’s weird how extra small and extra large cost the same because you are paying for less fabric. Right? No.
Black Eyes I saw about seventy five times. Then they broke up. Look at that video, Daniel looks so young. I listened to this music so much. I think it makes Daniel bummed when I talk about it still, he is like, Hey I do other stuff now. I do, too. I think my dad is like that sometimes except I like to just think about things he likes to reconnect with them. Which is weird to me. It’s difficult enough to be present in your life, to move forward bits. I’m bad at calling my twin sister, where am I going to get gumption to call someone I haven’t seen in years? Is this bad? Is it good? I am sure it is not both but I’m not sure which one it is yet. I think if Black Eyes didn’t break up more people would have cared but they didn’t get the chance.
In this month’s Believer, Zadie Smith writes about her writing methods. “I find it very hard to read my books after they’re published. I’ve never read White Teeth. Five years ago I tried; I got about ten sentences in before I was overwhelmed with nausea,” she says, and maybe Daniel would find some comfort in that. I never liked White Teeth much myself, but I live and die for On Beauty. It made me nauseous, too, in the perfect way. Smith, too. “While writing this lecture, I picked up On Beauty. I read maybe a third of it, not consecutively, but chapters here and there. As usual, the nausea, as usual, the feeling of fraudulence, and the too-late desire to wield the red pen all over the place—but something else, too, something new. Here and there—in very isolated pockets—I had the sense that this line, that paragraph, these were exactly what I meant to write, and the fact was, I’d written them and I felt OK about it, felt good, even. It’s a feeling I recommend to all of you. That feeling feels OK.” Oh god it makes me want to give up on life. I won’t spoil On Beauty because I would like you to read it but I will tell you I like things that are the best version of something regular and the end has a lot to do with sweating and forgetting something in your car and that’s it and that is what you do with your life, sweat a forget. Black Eyes were cool because they had so much rhythm. That’s not a particularly complex idea, it’s just hitting stuff in time. My mom asked my why I have been wearing only white t-shirts a lot lately. It’s because I like a little bit of systematic regularity, it lets the adventure arrive unbeknownst. I’ve got other places to put that wild energy.
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- posted on Jun 24, 2008 in SLEPT ON
- tags Black Eyes, experimental, rock, Zadie Smith
