Source: Prelude to 110 or 120/Women of the World.

Terrifying propaganda – beginning with Michelle Bachmann looking thoughtful and reasoned, instead of footage of her claiming people are going to be rounded up into camps. I’ve wondered why the big three of the most-troublingly batshit on the right are women: Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and now Christine O’Donnell. You can now add this congressional candidate to the mix. On the one hand, women might feel the need to out-hawk men in order to prove themselves – that was leveled at Hillary Clinton – but these women seem to come upon it honestly. They’re sincerely batshit.

This isn’t a huge surprise, as women are more religious than men, but it’s troubling, because women aren’t just “more religious” they’re more apt to believe in something with “absolute certainty” – i.e. be fundamentalist.   So the video above is absolutely true – the right-wing revolution happening right now is very much being fueled by women. You can argue that it’s good news that more women are in positions of power, but not if it means the melting line between church and state.  So it’s not really women of the world take over, or atheists of the world take over – it’s non-insane of the world take over. I don’t care what gender, just happen.

Reminds me of this scene from Fritjof Capra’s Mindwalk – which is pretty stilted but still thought-provoking. I’m not sure the Sarah Palin model fulfills what Liv Ullman is saying here. Scroll to around 40:15.

Her main point that the aggressive male mindset needs to be replaced with the nurturing female mindset. That’s true, but while the Mama Grizzlies tout that they’re mothers (”Motherhood is a political act,” whatever that means) it’s not as though they’re nurturing of the poor, or are anti-militant. The pro-war, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, conservative woman is hardly “taking it the patriarchy” – they’re encouraging it. Not a great insight – but it’s possible that a militantly far-right woman could come to power more easily than a man. Sarah Palin is proving that. It’s not sexist to say that the only reason she’s so successful is because she looks like a hot librarian. She’s more Paris Hilton than politician. It should be no surprise that the “Awakening of the Conservative Woman” has come right at the time when the media has fallen asleep.

Jim O’Rourke – Close to You by user2072932

It’s like a combination of these two posts.

More on the record here.

Update: Well, hmmn, Soundcloud took it down (and it’s posted a lotta places).  Hear it here.

It’s like watching my guitar teacher when I was nine – his fingers could do things mine couldn’t do.

More science:

Original here:

Jim O’Rourke on the song:

Q: What about Eureka’s first track? That’s a loaded line you’re singing there ["Women of the world, take over. If you don’t the world will come to an end, and it won’t take long"]. And the repetition works both to drive home the meaning and, by the end, just make the line an abstraction, just a wash of sound.

O’Rourke: Well, I appreciate that. I feel like someone’s finally listened to the record. There are two things about that song: one I knew beforehand and the other I didn’t figure out until recently. I’m really into songs like “Slowride” by Foghat. What’s interesting about that song – and it only works because of its length – is that through the constant reiteration of the words “slow ride” the words go from its obvious sexual connotation to just absolutely nothing. Because it’s being reiterated so much it just becomes another instrument. But when you take it over the long haul like that, what happens is the song actually starts singing about itself. It’s actually confirming its own existence in its own time. And because it’s such a banal statement – “slow ride, take it easy” – it works that way. So I thought it would be interesting to do that with a statement that was so loaded that it would actually resist that. Saying “women of the world take over” isn’t exactly banal. So it interested me what would happen if I reiterated this perplexing statement over and over again like that. Hopefully there would be this conflict between its desire to become this kind of mantra and something you don’t hear anymore.

Q: It almost works like a Steve Reich phase, falling in and out of meaning and abstraction.

O’Rourke: That’s the second thing. When I was in England recently the original recording of Gavin Bryars’ “Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet” was reissued. It’s an old piece of his where he uses a tape loop of a homeless man. At first it sounds like he’s just muttering. Then one instrument comes in, then another, and you start to notice he’s actually singing. And then you notice he’s in tune. Then you realise he is singing really beautifully. By the end – it’s a half-hour or so – there is a full orchestra playing, horns, strings, guitars, everything. And it’s gorgeous. I think it’s great because you can never hear it that first way again. When you go back to the beginning, you can hear the melody all the way through. That was the recording that shaped my mind into that way of thinking. I’d always known I wanted to figure out a way to mix minimalism and pop music, like Paul McCartney’s “Let Em In.” “Somebody’s knocking at the door, somebody’s ringing the bell.” That song is an underacknowledged minimalist masterpiece. It’s fucking awesome. Just brilliant. McCartney’s a genius. So that’s where it came from.

It’s a great thing to find out things about yourself from working through them. You know certain things about yourself, but hopefully if you put these roadblocks in the way of doing things the way that comes naturally, there are these phantom-y areas around where you only sort of know what you want to do. That’s where you find out who you are in the first place. Especially since music is not a verbal thing, so you don’t know how to articulate to yourself what you’re looking for.