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David Lynch is a very strange man. That’s never been said before, has it? Probably not. Anyway. I recently had the delightful (if disorienting) pleasure of seeing his exhibition of paintings, short films and ephemera at Paris’ Foundation Cartier. And my impression that he is a very strange man has not been budged one whit.

Lynch certainly subscribes to André Breton’s famous dictum from Nadja that “beauty will be convulsive or not at all.” His work consistently aims for the quease-inducing, but nevertheless gripping, fine line between the sacred and the profane, the ecstatic and the horrifying. There’s often a poetic quality to even the most nightmarish of his visions and, as such, it’s hard to dismiss even his most seemingly tossed-off or ridiculous ramblings because there’s usually a kernel of emotional truth there. (Or, at least, so I kept telling myself through the entire twisty last half of the sublimely ridiculous, often terrifying Mulholland Drive. Note to self: going to Lynch’s films alone is a BAD IDEA.)

The Fondation Cartier show certainly vacillated between the beautiful, the brilliant, and the resoultely half-baked. But, between the puerile, violent and scatologically-fixated Dumbland films, the viscerally ugly large-scale paintings (thick with impasto and decaying organic material), the eerie black-and-white shots of half-forgotten industrial wastelands and a series of luridly Technicolor pin-up shots, the show pretty much added up to a catalogue of all of Lynch’s varied obsessions. (All this and you could buy a pound of his signature coffee in the gift shop! I wonder if it makes you hallucinate the Red Room and talk backwards if you drink enough of it?)

The show included a surround-sound soundtrack, overseen by Lynch, to enhance that peculiarly Lynchian feeling of unease. Creaks, groans, and random bumps-in-the-night surrounded us as we went through gallery after gallery, giving each room a disquieting funhouse-after-dark quality. I would expect nothing less from the proven master of unease.

While in Paris I made a pilgrimage to painfully pretentious boutique Colette to look for music. On a whim I picked up Klima’s debut album. The alter-ego of French singer Angèle David-Guillou, aided and abetted by members of Piano Magic and Laika, the album is a playful, at times haunting song-set that calls to mind the wistful retro-futurism of Björk and the collagist temperament of singer-songwriters like Edison Woods. Seen in an, ahem, Lynchian context, you can almost picture her singing out at the empty roadhouse on a stormy night, her tempest-tossed voice carrying out over the treetops and the empty, forlorn road, and the traffic lights swaying in langorous time to the music.

Fondation Cartier | David Lynch | Peacefrog [Klima’s label]

a href=”http://warpedrealitymagazine.com/Track07.mp3″>David Lynch“The Air Is On Fire” (Track 7 of Sound Installation) [2007]

Klima, “Why Does Everything Have To End?” [2007]

PHOTO BY ANDREA | PARIS, MAY 2007

Angela Carter was a feminist in the guise of a fabulist. Fabulists are often dismissed as stylistic toe-dippers, as though speculative forms of fictional inquiry aren’t as valid as any other. (Really, isn’t ALL fiction speculative, when you get right down to it?) What made Angela Carter’s work so singular and potent was the way that she slyly and wittily worked through her own complex philosophical inquiry into the ever-shifting power struggle between the sexes, the rightful place of women in the world, and even her own internalized misogyny. Along the way, she subverted familiar tropes (her early novel “The Passion of New Eve” reads like a Technicolor post-apocalyptic satire as imagined by the bastardized offspring of Jack Smith and Shulamith Firestone) and rehabilitated fallen (and in some cases forgotten) anti-heroines like Lizzie Borden, Baudelaire’s mistress Jeanne Duval —even de Sade’s Justine. For all her verbal and visual pyrotechnics (she was, and is, an unparalleled prose stylist), throughout her career she remained, at heart, a humanist, and all her characters —even the most seemingly villainous— are rendered with a painterly sympathy. Reading between the lines of her short stories, novels, and journalistic pieces, one is drawn in to a singularly intimate conversation with Carter.

Since it’s Blog Against Sexism Day, it seemed fitting to write a tribute to Carter’s unique body of work. Revered in England, she never really gained a foothold in the US outside of academic circles. Since her untimely death in 1992 I fear that she’s been largely forgotten here. And that would be a shame, because she fearlessly (and sometimes contradictorily) engages in all sorts of issues that are still engaging us. Her book-length conversation about pornography, The Sadeian Woman, still stands as one of the most original takes on the topic; Carter engages this complex, personal and thorny issue from all sides. In her most satisfying novel, Nights at the Circus, a freewheeling mille-feuille, the eternal “Nature or Nurture?” debate is given a sly twist. Fevvers, the protagonist, is, at least initially, a fairly ambivalent figure: both a proud Nike and a commodified creature of the freak-show, marginalized and gawked at. While the novel is incredibly complex —at once a bawdy, rollercoaster ride and a tall-tale not easily summarized— it is at heart about the heroine’s long, complicated journey towards making her own place in the world.

May we all fare as well.

I leave you with the late Grant McLennan and Steve Kilbey’s heartfelt tribute to Angela Carter, recorded as part of their long-running Jack Frost collaboration.

For more information on Angela Carter, visit the unofficial Angela Carter home page. | Jack Frost. |Blog Against Sexism Day/ | Buy Angela Carter books at Amazon. (Or better yet, ask for them at your local independent bookseller.)

Jack Frost, “Angela Carter”

PHOTO BY FRANCESCA WOODMAN

I once received a type-written missive from a PR flack that read: “IF YOU LOVE BLONDE REDHEAD SO MUCH, WHY DON’T YOU MARRY THEM?” A fine rhetorical question, indeed. At the time (Volvo Soundtest-era) I was really besotted with their DNA-influenced brand of melodic discordance. There was something chaotic and anguished about them —something coiled up and dark, a little desperate. They were hypnotic too, alternating the squalls of razor-sharp feedback with blurred, eerie lullabies.

I lost track of them a little bit in the intervening years. Since then they’ve pared down from a quartet to a trio, shedding some of the more overtly atonal qualities along the way. But the echoes are still pronounced in this shimmering, sing-song single off their upcoming album “23” called, incidentally, “23.” (Thankfully, it has absolutely nothing to do with the craptastic Carrey-Schumacher abomination currently stinking up theatres.)

“Jetstar” is a song off an early Smells Like Records single. This version was recorded live at the late, great Threadwaxing Space. It appeared on the comp “Threadwaxing Space Live —The Presidential” that came out on Zero Hour back in 1995. (There are some other great tracks on there too, including GBV doing “I Am A Scientist,” Slant 6, Guv’ner, Slim Moon, and a lovely, languorous “St. Nowhere” from Miss Azalia Snail.)

“23” will be out in the US on April 10th. Blonde Redhead’s tour will start at SXSW (4AD showcase) and will continue throughout the US as follows:

March 14 Austin, TX Emo’s (SXSW 4AD SHOWCASE)
April 5 Nasa, Reykjavik Iceland (with Kristin Hersh)
April 7 Aldrei For Eg Sudur Festival, Isafjordur, Iceland
April 13 Detroit, MI Magic Stick
April 14 Chicago, IL Metro
April 15 Minneapolis, MN First Avenue
April 19 Portland, OR Wonder Ballroom
April 20 Vancouver, BC Commodore Ballroom
April 21 Seattle, WA The Showbox
April 23 San Francisco, CA Bimbo’s
April 24 San Francisco, CA Bimbo’s
April 25 Pomona, CA Glasshouse
April 27 Solana Beach, CA Belly Up Tavern
April 28 Indio, CA Coachella Valley Music Festival
May 1 Dallas, TX Gypsy Tea Room
May 2 Austin, TX Stubbs
May 4 Atlanta, GA Variety Playhouse
May 5 Carrboro, NC Cat’s Cradle
May 6 Washington, D.C. 9:30 Club
May 8 New York, NY Webster Hall
May 9 Boston, MA Paradise Rock Club
May 11 Toronto, ON The Opera House
May 12 Montreal, QC Club Soda

For more info, check the band’s website. The album can be pre-ordered via AmpCamp.com.

Blonde Redhead, “Jetsar” (Live at Threadwaxing Space)

Blonde Redhead, “23”

PHOTO BY SEBASTIAN MLYNARSKI