In Praise of Shadows

William Kentridge, four books, three records, and a movie

The Shrapnel in the Wood

It was the strangest thing.

As soon as I entered the exhibit for William Kentridge’s “In Praise of Shadows” at The Broad last weekend, I whipped out my notebook and started writing. Kentridge works across multiple media, usually more than one at a time. Animated films using charcoal images. Illustrations cluttered with collage and screaming meaning. Installation pieces that combine sculpture, pantomime, and sound recordings. He is interested in movement, process, transformation and opposed to the “static fact.”

Kentridge in his studio

I’ve been thinking about a novel I abandoned nearly fifteen years ago. It’s about a time and place in American history I still find fascinating. It’s a book with many failings: sprawling, overdetermined, and doesn’t really start cooking until the last act. I haven’t opened any files or reread any drafts but it moved to the forefront of my thoughts when I entered the exhibit. I think it has something to do with the fact that Kentridge’s sculptures looks like obsolete machines. His art opened up the novel in my imagination and showed me new ways of thinking about it. The following morning, I woke up with an idea for a way back into the novel, and when I wrote about it in my journal it flourished into something that resembled useful notes about character and plot.

Last week I wrote about how no one really knows how writing works. The murky stuff we refer to as “process” is just a code for things we’ll never understand. When I got home from the exhibit I was certain I had a Kentridge book on my shelves somewhere, a book I’ve never read and only thought about when purging the hoard. It was a “yes it stays” instead of a “no it goes” for reasons I can’t articulate. Maybe I thought it would useful somehow. Maybe it was too pretty to let go.

It's called Five Drawing Lessons and is based on a series of lectures Kentridge gave at Harvard. The first lesson? “In Praise of Shadows.”

Is the universe is trying to tell me something?

Nuvia outside The Broad

Five Books: Taylor Koekkoek, Gillian Flynn, Daniel Weismann & Jack Skelley

I’ve been reading a ton of books lately. So far this year I’ve read over 20 books. The LA Times has been keeping me busy, I’ve read a few graphic novels, which boosts the book count, and I’ve been listening to books while I drive. I tend to read from actual books during the day on my phone at night. Although I’ve been using social media more to promote Make It Stop, logging out from Twitter and Instagram has definitely contributed to my spike in reading and writing.

I read a fantastic collection of short stories by Taylor Koekkoek, the writer I visited in Portland last month. Faithful readers will recall the blizzard I drove through and my piece for the LA Times encompasses the journey. It just went online this morning and I hope you’ll check it out.

After I interviewed Gillian Flynn for the LA Times I read the two novels she wrote before Gone Girl: Sharp Objects and Dark Places. I was blown away by both. Sharp Objects starts as a mystery about a journalist assigned to a story in her home town, swerves into the freaky-deaky and crashes into psychological horror. Dark Places follows a similar trajectory but is unrelentingly dark. It’s bleak from the get-go and just keeps getting darker. Both books are incredibly well-written without a shred of sentimentality. Flynn is an absolute savage. Now I need to go back to Gone Girl and try to read it without imagining Ben Affleck’s stupid face.

Two books I’m excited about have SST connections. One I’ve read and the other I’m currently reading. Many readers of Message from the Underworld know Daniel Weizmann as Shredder, the name he used when writing for Flipside while he was in high school, or (unfortunately) “Shreader” the misspelling of his nickname in Hardcore California, one of the seminal texts of LA punk that he co-authored with Craig Lee of The Bags (and the LA Times).

Got all that? Well, Weizmann has a new novel coming out next month called The Last Songbird about a Lyft driver that gets wrapped up in a murder case when one of his frequent customers turns up dead in Hermosa Beach. Although the word “punk” or “SST” don’t appear anywhere in the novel there are a few Easter eggs for those of you who know your South Bay lore. But even if you miss those hidden clues The Last Songbird is a great, fast-moving mystery that roves all over the Southland but frequently ends up in the South Bay. Highly recommended.

The other book with SST connections is Jack Skelley’s The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker. I don’t want to say too much about it since the ARC just arrived in the mail the other day but it’s a short work of fiction written in the mid-80s that appeared in various zines, magazines, and performances over the years and is now collected for the first time. It’s set in the world of LA punk in the mid-80s (it opens in Torrance when Paul Roessler gets the narrator extremely high on their way to the Del Amo mall). It’s a time when the fragmented scene was moving in all kinds of directions and the narrator captures what it felt like. Skelley’s band, Lawndale, was very much a part of that scene and the book is decorated with fliers from Skelley’s readings with figures like Dennis Cooper, Amy Gerstler, Mike Kelley, Bob Flanagan and many others. A teenage time capsule of sex, drugs, and LA rock and roll.

Four Records: Long Knife, Form Rank, 16, Civic

In the first quarter of the year I invariably become obsessed with bands that put out records the previous year and make me want to revise my annual Raddest Records list. Such is life. This year is no different and two bands that released records late in 2022 that I’ve become fixated on (thanks to tips from Todd Taylor) are Long Knife, a Portland hardcore outfit that deploys sweet metal riffs, and Form Rank, a street punk band from LA with a song on their lips and Oi in their heart. I’m also loving sludge metal band 16 that released a new album in late 2022 called Into Dust. They’re playing at the Tower Bar, home of bad decisions, this weekend. Lastly, Civic’s long-awaited new record Taken by Force is finally out and it’s slowly growing on me.

One Movie: John Wick 4

John Wick: Chapter Four is a staggering work of ridiculous violence. I went to an advance screening last night and watched Keanu Reeves shoot his way through a half-dozen skirmishes with armed assassins bound by allegiances to arcane codes. Everything is over the top. Wick gets thrown down multiple flights of stairs, is hit by moving vehicles numerous times, and is riddled with bullets. He kills hundreds (thousands?) of bad guys and the cops never show up. It would be exhausting if it weren’t so much fun.

Make It Stop in April

The LA Times Festival of Books lineup has been announced and I will be appearing on a panel with Sammy Harkham, Sarah Priscus, and Antoine Wilson and moderated by Tracy Brown. It’s one of the last events of the festival at 2pm on Sunday April 23. Tickets required and there will be a book signing afterward. Hope to see you there!

The listing for my events at Book Catapult with Patrick Coleman on April 11, at Skylight Books with Bucky Sinister on April 15 and Book Soup with Terese Svoboda on April 26 are all online.

Rare Bird sent me sneak peak of the finished book and it looks fantastic!

Thank you to everyone who has preordered a copy of Make It Stop. You truly are the best and I can’t wait to see you at an event in the months to come!