Sunday, March 9, 2008

TECHNICAL prblm

Sorry submitters of photos and music. I'm having issues uploading them at this time. I will try again soon.

*update*

who knows a good way to upload a song/song player?

The Electric Vibe Devastates

by Jens Lloyd

Pseudo-pop pulses through his veins. Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm of his body against hers. She is moving in circles. He is keeping up. Lights from above bounce all around. He searches for her eyes, finds only darkness and bouncing lights.
Fifty people have found refuge here tonight. The rectangle of a dance floor is filled with the pounding of soles. Barefoot, they all move. Bounce. Pulse. Pop.

Grabbing after her, he says, “Why? Are we done?”
She laughs, releasing an enticing energy. He feels connected.
“Listen, man, I can’t do this all night. But I’ll see you. Tomorrow, yeah?”
“Where?” he stumbles.
A flash of her eyes. A flash of a smile. Enough of a response.
He’ll be back here tomorrow.

He hits the pavement and the day is almost over. The setting sun casts red all over the street.
Clicking over from the adverts, he finds some trip-hop-Bollywood-fusion beat and sticks with it. There is some vocal track layered on it. The feminine vocals are like water. Smooth enough that he can slip into the beat and slide down the street.

Sitting outside the rectangle, he is waiting for her and downing some bland, pointless drink. It burns. He is watching the dance floor. Two guys are at the center, caught in some tangle of a move. They unwind and break away to the cheers of the surrounding crowd. His focus goes back to the tabletop. He runs his finger around the wet circle left by glass. He rubs it out and thinks of the watery vocals he got lost in on the way here. He feels the dance floor revving back up.

Her jeans are tight and he can see all her muscles tense as she sits down.
“Hey,” she says calmly.
“Didn’t expect you around here.”
She looks up at him. He gets a glimpse of her eyes. That energy, he felt it when she laughed last night, it is still there.
She goes after the thick laces on her boots. He is slipping off his shoes.
“You want something to drink?”
“Nope. I think I’m alright.”
“Yeah.”
She slides out of both her boots. He gets up and offers his hand. She pushes him onto the floor.

The electric vibe devastates. His vision is beginning to blur. The music gets hot. It is dripping out from the speakers and onto the floor. She is leaning back into him or something like that. He is losing his grip. She is starting to sing. It reaches his ears in waves, bleeding in with the music. She sounds like water, stretched out far over a beach. And she is getting into him. He can’t help it. He grabs for her and misses. He grabs again and gets her shirt. She slows down.
“ ,” she says.
“I can’t break ,” he shouts.
“ ,” she turns back to the speakers and starts moving again.
He seeps through the crowd towards his table. He doesn’t even know if he said anything to her. Maybe he was just pushing thoughts out of his mouth and failing. He needs something cool, refreshing.
A guy takes a hold of his hand.
“ me!” the guy exclaims.
“ sorry ,” as he breaks away.
Nearing the edge, two girls dance into his path. He gets mixed in with them. And spins.

He has his head in her lap. They are sitting on the curb.
“Sorry.”
“No problem, man.”
“That got too much for me and then those two ladies got me and,” he ends his sentence somewhere.
She laughs and looks down the street.
“It is time to go.”
“Oh, no. Really? What time is it?”
“Time to go.”
“Ah. But. I wanted to stay with you.”
She looks at him.
“Yeah, well, you don’t have to stay with me here.”

“Where do you live?”
They are holding hands.
“Somewhere close. I am not staying there for long.”
“Oh. Cool. I want to move to. I hate where I live. Can I move with you?”
She starts walking faster and he stumbles to keep up.
She turns to him.
“Can you move with me? I dunno. You do pretty good.”

She bangs at the tap, getting a few more drops into the cup.
“That’ll have to do, man.”
“Hey. No big deal. It should be enough. Just some water.”
He takes the cup and gulps.
She drops down onto the floor with him. She reaches behind and grabs a pillow. She offers it. He denies it and chooses to rest in her lap again. She doesn’t protest.
“So, you really are getting ready to move?”
“I don’t have much. It is easy.”
“Cool,” he eases into it.
He is soon fast asleep.

There are muffled sounds coming from above. Cars roll by outside the walls. Heavy noises infiltrate the small, crooked room.
His head is on the pillow. He wipes some of the drool from his mouth.
“Uck.”
“Yeah, you started doing that on my lap.”
“Oh, crap. I’m sorry.”
“No, no. It was kinda funny. Cute, too.”
She is rummaging through a paper bag.
“Juice?”
“Sure.”
She tosses him a half-empty bottle of orange juice.
“Food will be another issue. I’m all out.”
“No problem. Let’s go get some breakfast. On me.”
“Fine. If you wanna call a meal at 3:30 in the afternoon breakfast.”

The best he can do is some bran muffins from the local coffee place.
“I’m sorry for this. I promised breakfast.”
“Muffins work.”
They find a table in the corner. Some of the people in the place look at the two of them and wonder what the hell their story is.
He bites into his muffin.
“Take the paper thing off.”
“Huh?”
“The paper cup thing around the muffin.”
She laughs, as he spits out the bits of muffin and paper.
Delicately removing her paper thing, she leans back against the window.
He reaches into his pocket for his player.
“You wanna listen to anything?”
“No, I’m good. I don’t dig it as much if I’m not up and moving to it.”
“Oh. Sure. Be all cool like that.”
She smiles.
He spins to the song he was listening to yesterday. The vocals like water track.
He looks at her.
“You sing, too.”
“Huh?”
“You were singing or whatever. Last night when we were on the floor.”
“Oh.”
“It was cool. Real cool. I liked it. It sorta sounded like the vocals on this one.”
He presses play and hands it to her.
She listens.
Laughs.
“This sounds a lot more sexy, I’m sure.”
“Nope.”
She looks at him. And hands him back his player.
“I like you,” he says.
A beat.
I like you, too” she says.

Back on the street, they have one more conversation.
“Where are you moving to?”
“Probably far.”
“Yeah, like outta town?”
“Yeah.”
“Listen, I don’t have,” but his thought dissipates as he catches something her eyes.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“Right now, I am going back to my place to nap for a bit.”
“Oh.”
“You should do the same.”
He is silent.
“See you later, man.”
And she turns and is gone.

He slowly walks back. He is blasting some apocalipsis-metal. Some new sound from Mexico that he’s been digging on for the last few weeks. It sounds good really loud. The shredding guitar alone rips out all the other crap flying around in his head.

He is back early that night. Earlier than usual. He is drinking more. His foot is tapping. He has taken off his shoes, trying everything to anticipate and speed up her arrival.
The energy is too much. He jumps onto the floor. He finds release to the sounds of a bounding Caribbean-infused brick-tech track.

He slips out from the group on the floor and finds his seat again.
He wants her. But he is thinking that he should just leave. He let out his energy for the night. He is all done. He should go.
She bends down and whispers into his ear.
“You look good out there without me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters as he pulls her out onto the floor.
She flings off her boots. He reaches for her hips. They hit the vibe together. The resounding thump of human soles begins to dull his hearing. She starts to fade, but he reaches for her and pulls her back into him. The room and the sounds and the soles become one. Like all the nights previous.

Peeling away from his body, she slips him a kiss.
“ ,” she says.
“ ,” he replies.
And she retreats from the dance floor.
His eyes track her, as she slides along the far wall and towards the door. She is soon obscured.
He fends off a few people who try to dance with him.
He is at the center of the rectangle, unmoving.
He wants one last glimpse of her. He won’t get it.
A shredding guitar detonates out across the dance floor. The speakers project some vicious thread of apocalipsis-metal.
It rips out his thoughts and leaves him blank.

wah-wahs not water wars; blooms not booms

(by Matt Moon)
I brought a bottle of wine bought on the way at a chain convenient store to a house whose front door was unlocked and people filled the light blue and dark red-colored air with musical vibrations bouncing all around everywhere and my ears rang with pleasure as I rose to a smile like a sunshine for a face. Pretty girls were all around. Ugly ones too. Boys of all shapes and sizes from effeminate Ted and pussy behavior to grizzly bear Joe who used to wrestle grizzlies while living in the Canadian mountains as a youth in army school. Joe and I bumped chests and I set down my bottle of wine and began the booty-shaking and everything burned up the walls and screams were yelled as sweating women stomped their feet on off-color carpet covering hardwood floors built in 1902 -- cheap and slummed like we like it -- and I stopped and talked with an Indian girl whose name I couldn’t remember because [it's foreign and unfamiliar] and she told me that she was going to work in a school in her parents’ home country of Bangladesh. My mind scolded at me for not getting into her pussy. I immediately think how I’m racist somehow. Then I talk to the other Indian-looking girl who wasn’t as hot or interesting and I danced with a body that approached my direction and tornadoed myself throughout the house. The reasons were written all over the walls – alienation, loneliness, unoriginal thought (must it always be posters of idols?) and the fireplace didn’t work because zoning laws made you turn on the gas. Jesus Christ had nothing to do with it, not anymore in any soul’s heart. I was the closest one since I’ve long wanted to be Jesus redeemer of the world with the heart bursting out of his chest radiating love until the whole world around him became a big WAH-WAH of love, a neverending purr that filled every atom in your space-filled body filled with space.
Grizzly Joe’s girlfriend comes up to me with her thin body and perfectly stretched small tits and I start to dance wit her, I love to dance with her, our bodies move like magic and I never would have really liked her if we didn’t dance so well together – she let me fling her like I wanted and she was light enough to spin around with my high school wrestling toss-improvisations and she would run and hope if I wanted, barefoot in the grass across a graduation party evening and one night 18 months ago I laid my head in her lap while drunk on wine at the first ever [national chain campus group] dance party -- which I knew was obviously influenced by my dance off with this [weird crazy spontaneous kid that had some genius but seemed utterly clueless and hard to take seriously (you felt like he was a walking actor who couldn’t obviously be this bizarre)] -- and now there was a dance party with me in high demand as I hip-rocked the ladies and then I was laying in the lap of this long thin sexy dancer and she ran her hands through my hair lovingly, and I purred like a cat and somehow I ended up walking out the front door with her and Grizzly Joe and I could feel that it was this competition. This great big question of who got to walk her home [and then what?] and I just felt it in every step on the sidewalk, the three of us, and I decided to happily excuse myself from the equation. I know not the equation – fear, love, guilt, -- probably all three together like a big glass beaker in my brain filled by a [Chem101] student half-confused dumping hazardous chemicals down the drain. But then he and her were together pretty much and then [the regional conference] happened and myself and my best friend [who was a group member for about two-and-a-half weeks] took his mom’s empty house that needed to be sold and we danced the fuck out of that place with a boombox that skipped like crazy because we were so lost in it, we being 10 from the [campus group] and any young people we invited and we went totally insane before the booze even kicked in, we suddenly went into the small room and started banging on the floor and hollering in maddened tongue and the boombox skipped for 43 seconds as God appeared on earth did a jig and then went mad-bat shit crazy indigenous drugged all of a sudden screaming in the woods and having a spiritual orgy with every atom the filled the space. Electrontricityprettywittyittybittycity. Her and me danced hot that night. Then I read too much [war and terror text/video documents] and fell into a deep depressed certainty that the world would collapse and Hell would unleash itself on planet earth and we’d all die or at least I would.
“How you doing, Jacob?”
“I’m fantastic. And yourself?”
“Beautiful.”
I smile and she smiles. We do a weird whacked out chicken dance that we fall into somehow. Then I find myself drinking wine and talking with boys out in the backyardalley where people drank clear plastic cups filled with beer from the keg and I drank my wine and stumbled up to Grizzly Joe and this Republican-esque smalltown kid who joined last fall and kept going to the meetings.
“… it was ridiculous,” Republican-esque smalltown kid finished. His name was Ted and I asked him what it was; it was his being an intern for Republican state politicians and his seeing what a big joke that representative democracy was. “I mean, one time they had this meeting where none of the interns were allowed to attend, but we were standing right outside the door and we could hear what they were saying, and they were saying shit like we gotta show those Democrats who runs this statehouse!” like a big rah-rah pep rally run by a bunch of frat-house retards. I smirked and nodded knowingly, because I am the knower of all things. I am the cynical senior and I yell some quote about Democracy I stole from Charles Bukowski and the two of them laugh politely. And then I leave and then I come back and Grizzly Joe is telling Republican Tom and [his friend] that using force will at some point be necessary.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Joseph?” I ask. “At what point will it be necessary to ‘use force’,” and I use the quote marks.
“Well,” he says, “say for example, everybody on High Street decided to stop paying rent to their landlords who live off in [the richlands]. It’s not like the police are just going to stand by and let that happen. They’re gonna come in with smoke bombs and batons and start beating heads in [like they used to shoot firehouses at peacefully protesting black people].”
And I nod my head. “Sure,” I say, “but listen! * -- What’s going to really happen is that we’re gonna start this traveling mouth band, and we’re just gonna parade around the earth singing stupid nonsense songs and we’ll go to every land and we won’t buy visas and if they throw up a GREAT WALL we’ll just cover it with crayon drawings,” and I kick my foot to implicate the insanity and then take a big swig of the glass and smile as big as I can. Joe the jovial drunk. He starts tootin’ his horn and doing this crazy kicking dance and the three add bass “ching ching” wah-wah sound and people not.ice from afar.
I stop and smile. “Excuse me while I get more wine.”
Inside, Like a Prayer by Madonna is beginning. People are already singing.
My glass is refilled with the white wine that’s left and I slide back into the dance-room in the middle of the house. I snap into the role of intense singing with a big perma-grin breaking my face my cheeks are gonna go through the bones of my skull and we all enslave ourselves to the vibrations in the air until we’re sweating and throwing ourselves passionately across the floor like a church choir in equator Africa and in the end, we all just smile and breathe at each other, and every look at one another is like a cosmic holy fuck after you just did the deed in a wild wonderful exhilarating way that I’ve never had fucking [no that’s a lie, I’ve had it while fucking]. I would marry [this one girl in the room] if her boyfriend didn’t exist. Instead, I’ve tempted him to eat [the fruit of knowledge of good and evil] and now we’re great buds waitin’ to bloom from the pull of the moon as we all skyrocket ‘round the sun in elliptical circles that are part of circles whose center we cannot see. I touch two girls bare feet and suddenly it’s 4 AM and I walk out of the closing house with this weird 30-year old grad student who teaches and runs this indigenous slave-fighting dance that slaves did in Brazil so they could keep sharp on their martial arts while pretending to just be “dancing”. We drink another beer on the sidewalk by the main drag and we help out this wandering dumb white trashy girl whose boyfriend is “Palestinian” and treats her like an obedient Muslim wife even though he’s not that devout. We comfort her and let her call her friends who take thirty minutes to pick her up. We drink a second beer and I tell him about the girl I love and he agrees that we’re two peas in a pod on some infinite pea patch full of wonderful bubbles and sizzles and pops. Then we say goodbye and I walk home as the sun begins to illuminate the sky and I go inside, my mostly dark house as the rising dawn slowly oh slowly illuminates the air through our many windows and I goof around for a second and drink some water and sit, before I go upstairs to pass out and sleep in my wonderful wonderful comforters, resting my head on my flattened pillows, and let my brain shut down its 0s and 1s until all the lights on the circuit board have twinkled down and out and sleep comes to everything.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Our First Film Submission

comes from an anonymous source which simply calls it self "Digital Lover"

Photos de Stray







It went down.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

the skinny

It's that time of the quarter. Nudge Arts Journal (http://nudgearts.blogspot.com)is accepting submissions until March 7, and has the details for you on how to submit.

The short of it:

THEME

DANCE PARTY
Hedonism, paganism, drugs - do these features of youth
culture signal the coming apocalypses or are they a necessary postmodern
catharsis? Will disco rise again in the 2010s to consume Western culture
with hyper-sexual courtship? Is disco mindless aestheticism? Don't we
all just want to dance?

Approach this theme valiantly. Create new work that addresses it however you see fit. Take your old work and make it fit the theme. Do what you think you need to do to get your point across in this context.

SUBMISSIONS CATEGORIES

Same as last time: Fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, film, music, visual art, and photography.

DEADLINE

March 7. This will be a rolling deadline, meaning that you can submit at any point during this quarter. All submissions will go online (http://nudgearts.blogspot.com) for review. After the deadline passes, three cuts will be made, and 5 submissions per submission category will be chosen for publication.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

All submissions will be sent to nudgearts@gmail.com. The format for sending them is as follows:

Subject for all emails containing submissions: type of submission (fiction writing, creative nonfiction writing, poetry, film, music, visual art, photography)
Naming for all submission files: typeofsubmission_artistsna
me_worktitle.extension

For more specific info, check out this link: http://nudgearts.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=7

You have to scroll down a little bit, but the necessary information is there. The only thing that will change is that the publication will hopefully be in color this time around.

Nudge is making some pretty significant and very exciting changes, and our community is really starting to form. Consider coming to the Parnassus Presents Emerging Artist events on Wednesdays at 5:30, and also next Friday at 5:30 to listen to a reading from Stray. Watch out for announcements on more events -- our theme is Dance Party, after all.

More detailed info on submissions is written below. It's not completely necessary to read, but you may find it helpful.

Questions: Email nudgearts@gmail.com or visit http://nudgearts.blogspot.com.

The long of it:

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: Nudge Arts Journal is looking for people who are willing to push themselves beyond their limits for the sake of pursuing originality in their work. Nudge wants you to risk elitism and irrelevance with your submissions for the sake of creating a bolder arts community here at the UW.

That said, we'll have a fairly rigid structure when it comes to the physical publication and editorial details. Nudge is still a journal, and we will still accept submissions in the same categories: fiction writing, creative nonfiction writing, poetry, visual art, music, and film/video. All of these submissions will focus on our theme (DANCE PARTY). Instead of publishing all of our choice submissions, however, we will put an additional restraint on the print publication: we will only publish five submissions from each category. This will hopefully encourage people to be especially creative with their work and will also free up some funds so we can make the publication really sweet-looking. Also, instead of just being a print publication, Nudge will have an influential online component: a blog (http://nudgearts.blogspot.com) where all submissions will be posted with space for reader and editor
comments. This will allow people to submit as many pieces of work as they want and allow many people to see what kind of work is being produced by UW undergraduates.

Our final deadline will be March 7, but it will be a rolling deadline, so people can submit their work at any time during the quarter. All submissions will be sent to nudgearts@gmail.com, and one person will take the names off all submissions and post the anonmymous submissions online. After the March 7 deadline passes, editors will make three final cuts. First cut in all sections is made as a collective group. Second cut will be made by section editors, and once this cut is made, feedback will be provided to the remaining contributors on their work. Final cut will be approval of editor and managing editor.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

-Claire