Ben Ratliff says nice things about Crackleknob!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/arts/music/23vision.html
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
It's Hot....I'm outta here!
I officially recognized that I was going to sweat for the next 9 weeks solid. There is always that morning when I"m going through my shirt drawer and it dawns on me that it really doesn't matter what I wear, I'm going to be a totally gross, stinky sweat mess for 63 days. It doesn't matter how many showers I take, the fact remains that I am from Oregon. I am of broad countenance. I am hirsute. Therefore, I'm just going to leave in July and leave you "oh, I love the warm weather" people to slowly wilt. Let's talk again mid-September when the first rains hit and you can complain to me. I will gladly listen.
Until I leave, however, I have a couple of performances I'm calling "sweating to the....." I hope you'll come out and feel the burn.
Tonight!
Local 269
Vision Festival!
269 E. Houston, Manhattan
Come sweat to the progressive music interplay of CRACKLEKNOB!
Nate Wooley/Mary Halvorson/Reuben Radding
Mary Halvorson/Reuben Radding/Nate Wooley
Reuben Radding/Nate Wooley/Mary Halvorson
We play at 10:30.
Tomorrow!
Issue Project Room
232 3rd Street, Brooklyn
Come sweat to compositional linguistics!
Critical Theory discussion about the music of Kenneth Gaburo
featuring performances by Megan Schubert, Warren Burt, Chris Mann, and a very rarely seen video piece of Gaburo's
and a panel discussion led by myself and featuring David Dunn, Larry Polansky, Warren Burt, and Chris Mann
8 pm
Friday!
IBEAM
168 7th street, Brooklyn
Come sweat to a reductionist version of THE NATE WOOLEY QUINTET
Nate Wooley
Josh Sinton
Matt Moran
8:30
and finally,
Wednesday, June 30!
Barbes
6th and 9th in Brooklyn
Come sweat to the same thing you sweat to tonight!
CRACKLEKNOB!
see above
early show 7 pm
followed by Huntsville from Norway!
woohoo, get out your electric fans and let's get this mess on the road.
Until I leave, however, I have a couple of performances I'm calling "sweating to the....." I hope you'll come out and feel the burn.
Tonight!
Local 269
Vision Festival!
269 E. Houston, Manhattan
Come sweat to the progressive music interplay of CRACKLEKNOB!
Nate Wooley/Mary Halvorson/Reuben Radding
Mary Halvorson/Reuben Radding/Nate Wooley
Reuben Radding/Nate Wooley/Mary Halvorson
We play at 10:30.
Tomorrow!
Issue Project Room
232 3rd Street, Brooklyn
Come sweat to compositional linguistics!
Critical Theory discussion about the music of Kenneth Gaburo
featuring performances by Megan Schubert, Warren Burt, Chris Mann, and a very rarely seen video piece of Gaburo's
and a panel discussion led by myself and featuring David Dunn, Larry Polansky, Warren Burt, and Chris Mann
8 pm
Friday!
IBEAM
168 7th street, Brooklyn
Come sweat to a reductionist version of THE NATE WOOLEY QUINTET
Nate Wooley
Josh Sinton
Matt Moran
8:30
and finally,
Wednesday, June 30!
Barbes
6th and 9th in Brooklyn
Come sweat to the same thing you sweat to tonight!
CRACKLEKNOB!
see above
early show 7 pm
followed by Huntsville from Norway!
woohoo, get out your electric fans and let's get this mess on the road.
Monday, May 24, 2010
New Review and show tonight!
Saturday, May 22, 2010 from Killed in Cars
Also, the quintet will be playing tonight, May 24th at Douglass Street Music Collective.....2 sets, good times....starts at 8 pm on the nose! See you there!
Nate Wooley & Paul Lytton - Creek Above 33 (Psi, 2010)
Artist
Label
Discogs
last.fm
RYM
For such a young trumpeter, Nate Wooley has performed and recorded with a healthy range of challenging experimental artists, from Wolf Eyes to John Zorn to Akron/Family. The first time I saw him perform was with a trio consisting of C. Spencer Yeh and Chris Corsano, and the last time was with Trevor Dunn’s PROOFReaders (with Darius Jones and Ryan Sawyer) who were presenting selected works by Ornette Coleman for Ars Nova Workshop's Composer Portrait Series. Both were very different but immensely rewarding music experiences that demonstrated the full force and diversity of Wooley’s abilities as a player. With the first ensemble, Wooley did not produce a traditional note or scale all evening, instead emphasizing the instrument’s hidden potential for emitting whispers, heavy ghost breaths, industrial screams, and deep, earth shattering, low-end booms. With the second, Wooley nailed Coleman’s complicated trumpet phrases, excellently representing Coleman’s ability to create pieces that simultaneously reinforce and push beyond the traditional jazz idiom.
On Creek Above 33, both of these aspects of Wooley’s playing are united. This is the second time that Wooley has recorded as a duo with percussionist and electronicist Paul Lytton, the first being a 2008 limited edition LP on Brokenresearch. The two have performed together on many occasions, however, including in trio form along with David Grubbs at 2007’s Festival of New Trumpet Music, where Wooley debuted a composition that was recorded and released last year titled The Seven Storey Mountain (read my Tiny Mix Tapes review of the album here). Lytton is a veteran in experimental circles, working with Evan Parker for many years, and more recently with Ken Vandermark’s various Territory Band large ensembles, that include Paal Nilssen-Love, Kevin Drumm, Dave Rempis, Kent Kessler, and many others. The creative partnership between Lytton and Wooley has no doubt been a beneficial one, as Wooley confesses in the liner notes for this release that Lytton led him to completely re-evaluate his approach to making music. The harbinger of this transition was a “mind map” created by Lytton – which appears here as the cover art – in which he attempted to visualize both of their intertwining and agonistic trajectories as artists within jazz and improvised music continuums. The sonic result of this radical rethinking is Creek Above 33.
Lytton’s screeching friction opens the album with Wooley’s amplified horn pushing out rapid, reverb-drenched blasts. “The Mbala Effect” is a spatial delight as Lytton produces poly-textural percussive splatters that enter from near and far. Wooley’s approach to the horn is reminiscent of Bill Dixon’s playing on 2009’s fantastic Tapestries For Small Orchestra, though his inclusion of more breathy, volcanic notes and moans is significantly more violent and disruptive. The piece gets truly terrifying around the 8 minute mark: it’s as if Lytton is cranking up a jackhammer, or commanding a demolition squad, rather than working behind a drum kit. Meanwhile, a possessed Wooley resurrects a Takashi Miike-esque demon-growl with his horn. Lytton has been experimenting with electronics for many years, as well as homemade instruments like the Lyttonophone and Dopplerphone, which were both used in the Evan Parker Trio. However, given Lytton’s textural and friction-centric approach to percussion, as well as the multiple instruments that his infamously massive kit contains, it’s difficult to tell what sounds are the result of electronics and what are not.
Lytton shines on “The Gentle Sturgeon,” creating a chaotic array of mysterious scrapes and bangs while Wooley’s breath-play drones and screams above the myriad layers. Half-way through the track the demolition squad returns, but this time more lunar (or, perhaps given the song-title, deep sea) drops of electro-ping and tension follow. Whatever revelation Wooley and Lytton sparked in one another from their pre-recording ruminations on their artistic pasts and futures worked. Creek Above 33 is a fantastic journey through the music histories of both artists and the reference nodes span across the diverse, but overlapping, traditions of experimental musics and jazz (perhaps most evident in Wooley’s deconstructed bop tendencies on “Filtering The Fogweed”). This is an excellent display of both artists’ perpetual development. Lytton continues to be pushing music further forward, as he has been for over 40 years, and Wooley’s approach to his instrument somehow gets even more perplexing and engaging.
Elliott Sharp
Monday, April 12, 2010
I'm a Capitalist, dammit.
I've locked my blog in the basement for a couple of months because it used wire hangers.
No, that isn't funny, I agree.
I am finally back on it to announce a boatload of releases in the month of Marpril and to promise to be more on top of getting those gig emails on here more regularly.
First,
for those of you that don't have a computer, you can't read this anyway, so it doesn't matter.
The Almond, an excerpt from a longer piece that I'm coddling on its way out the door to a nice record label in the country where it can run around all it wants, is up now on Compost and Height
It's a new kind of piece for me, not really sure what that means, but I find it kind of exciting nonetheless. Plus it has this nice photo from the lovely and talented Sarah Spears (sorry Sarah, I turned it upside down).
There is also a new solo LP out on the great Smeraldina-Rima label called "Nate Wooley Trumpet/Amplifier". Fantastic cover art, great liners from Ben Hall and nice heavy wax. Side A is two completely acoustic tracks and side B is one long feedback piece with the trumpet being used to mold things.
And finally, and the most recent!
Paul Lytton/Nate Wooley Creak Above 33 on Emanem/Psi!!!!!!!!
I"m so excited about this, I can't even tell you. Paul has been one of my heroes for a long time, and to get to work with him over a long period has been life changing. I'm really proud of this record. It's a tough one, and that makes me really excited, something to sink the teeth into. Beautiful cover by Anna Lytton and some real weird liner notes/drawings by Paul and I. Special thanks to Evan Parker for getting this one going!
Monday, January 11, 2010
I generally think of every single aspect of my life as its own discrete cycle. Everything from the banality of work scheduling and train schedules down to keeping track of which people ride the same train car as me and at what rate they cycle their outfits. At my most metaphysically lucid, I can almost see myself as a walking set of billions of ephemeral perambulations consisting of every relationship I have to animal, vegetable, mineral, or ideology. I think most people would find this a touch obsessive, and there are times that I would agree with them, but I view it in another way that, while definitely more dark, tends to take on more of a philosophical bent. Jean Baudrillard, the great French semiologist/philosopher, take a similar stance in view of the human need to collect. He says that we collect things in a series (the people that do collect things, and most musically minded people are like this in my experience) to rehearse completion. In other words, we collect a series to either complete it and thus rehearse the only thing in our life which is absolutely a positivity....its end, or we collect a series to prove to ourselves that there is always something else, thus giving ourselves a false sense of immortality. Now, as a firm believer in reincarnation, I don't really see how it would be any different with my lust for cyclical tabulation. I watch the cycles of my life, or enforce a subconscious cycle on things to rehearse or deny the end of my existence in this form, depending on the situation. That's the way I justify the amount of energy that goes into these exercises at least.
Now, that has nothing to do with the meat of this email, which is this story I'm about to relate, but I think you need the background to understand why such a seemingly banal occurrence could be so incredible to me. One of the cycles that I pay close attention to, because I experience it almost every day consists of my walk from the PATH train at World Trade Center to my office on Broad Street. I always take the same set of streets (are you really surprised by that?), and they cycle consists mostly of a set of people, a series of thoughts, and generally a group of a/b psychic switches. It is basically a binary cycle...."at this news kiosk there will be the old black man yelling at the younger Middle Eastern man...or not"...."the blond woman that always wears tweed jackets will cut through Trinity church....or she will continue straight"...."I will have the urge to buy a coffee at the Wall Street deli....or I will not think about it". One part of the cycle is always the same though and it has always kind of bothered me. On the corner of Broadway and William Street there is a Travelex office, a place where they do currency exchange. As I walk up William, I pass by their office on the left and at the last cubicle on the Broadway side there is a woman. I have never actually seen this woman, so I don't know if she is young or old, beautiful or homely, radiant or dull. All I have ever seen, in fact, is the part in her hair as she hunches over her desk, working on her computer. Every day, I see this part. I have wanted it to change, somehow, looking for small discrepancies in the slightly off center nature of the part, but it always remains the same. There was a period of time when I thought perhaps she was a mannequin, seated there as part of an elaborate scheme for Travelex to pay a seperate salary. That is insane, obviously. Today, a day that has forever rocked my "going to work cycle" by its ever loving foundations, I walked up William Street, hoping perhaps she would be wearing a beret, or would have gotten a hair cut. But, as I turned eyes left to take in the part, my darling Travelex worker had not only finally looked up from her computer, but was standing behind her desk.....dancing. I don't know why she was dancing. I've been in Travelex and it is not that exciting a place, nor have I ever heard any dance worthy music (or any music at all) played in a Travelex, but there she was, exploding a small part of a small part of my perambulations. I was in shock. I stopped on the sidewalk and watched her dance. Finally, inevitably, she looked out the window at the beardo in the army jacket. I was using all of my Scandinavian power of self control, but I couldn't help it and danced a little with her. Nothing big, a few white boy steps, the best I could do in my bulky jacket and glittens. She smiled and sat down. Now I have to come to grips with the fact that there is a possibility of something more in this cycle. Was this just an aberration, or can I at least count on my Travelex buddy for a new binary....."Travelex girl sits in front of computer showing only the part in her hair.....or busts a wicked move". I"m hoping for the latter.
Enough of that, lots of super fun gigs this week.
Come out, let me add you as a part of my spinning spinning spinning:
Tuesday January 12
Issue Project Room
232 3rd Brooklyn
Bram Stadhouders-solo guitar from the Netherlands
Heave and Shudder (Audrey Chen/Nate Wooley) with Gil Arno (video)
Kenta Nagai-solo something (you never know with Kenta, always good though)
8 pm
Wednesday January 13
Abrons Art Center
466 Grand StreetManhattan
FONT's 4 night festival (this is the first night, you should check the schedule, looks pretty rocking)
I'll be playing the piece "Rugby" with John Zorn
7:30
Friday January 15
IBeam Studios
168 7th Street
Brooklyn
Telluric Currents Series, curated by Jeremiah Cymerman
Dafna Naphtali/Chuck Bettis
Nate Wooley (solo)
Alexander Waterman/Ryan Sawyer (woohoo)/Zach Layton
8 pm
thanks, see you soon! Nate
Now, that has nothing to do with the meat of this email, which is this story I'm about to relate, but I think you need the background to understand why such a seemingly banal occurrence could be so incredible to me. One of the cycles that I pay close attention to, because I experience it almost every day consists of my walk from the PATH train at World Trade Center to my office on Broad Street. I always take the same set of streets (are you really surprised by that?), and they cycle consists mostly of a set of people, a series of thoughts, and generally a group of a/b psychic switches. It is basically a binary cycle...."at this news kiosk there will be the old black man yelling at the younger Middle Eastern man...or not"...."the blond woman that always wears tweed jackets will cut through Trinity church....or she will continue straight"...."I will have the urge to buy a coffee at the Wall Street deli....or I will not think about it". One part of the cycle is always the same though and it has always kind of bothered me. On the corner of Broadway and William Street there is a Travelex office, a place where they do currency exchange. As I walk up William, I pass by their office on the left and at the last cubicle on the Broadway side there is a woman. I have never actually seen this woman, so I don't know if she is young or old, beautiful or homely, radiant or dull. All I have ever seen, in fact, is the part in her hair as she hunches over her desk, working on her computer. Every day, I see this part. I have wanted it to change, somehow, looking for small discrepancies in the slightly off center nature of the part, but it always remains the same. There was a period of time when I thought perhaps she was a mannequin, seated there as part of an elaborate scheme for Travelex to pay a seperate salary. That is insane, obviously. Today, a day that has forever rocked my "going to work cycle" by its ever loving foundations, I walked up William Street, hoping perhaps she would be wearing a beret, or would have gotten a hair cut. But, as I turned eyes left to take in the part, my darling Travelex worker had not only finally looked up from her computer, but was standing behind her desk.....dancing. I don't know why she was dancing. I've been in Travelex and it is not that exciting a place, nor have I ever heard any dance worthy music (or any music at all) played in a Travelex, but there she was, exploding a small part of a small part of my perambulations. I was in shock. I stopped on the sidewalk and watched her dance. Finally, inevitably, she looked out the window at the beardo in the army jacket. I was using all of my Scandinavian power of self control, but I couldn't help it and danced a little with her. Nothing big, a few white boy steps, the best I could do in my bulky jacket and glittens. She smiled and sat down. Now I have to come to grips with the fact that there is a possibility of something more in this cycle. Was this just an aberration, or can I at least count on my Travelex buddy for a new binary....."Travelex girl sits in front of computer showing only the part in her hair.....or busts a wicked move". I"m hoping for the latter.
Enough of that, lots of super fun gigs this week.
Come out, let me add you as a part of my spinning spinning spinning:
Tuesday January 12
Issue Project Room
232 3rd Brooklyn
Bram Stadhouders-solo guitar from the Netherlands
Heave and Shudder (Audrey Chen/Nate Wooley) with Gil Arno (video)
Kenta Nagai-solo something (you never know with Kenta, always good though)
8 pm
Wednesday January 13
Abrons Art Center
466 Grand StreetManhattan
FONT's 4 night festival (this is the first night, you should check the schedule, looks pretty rocking)
I'll be playing the piece "Rugby" with John Zorn
7:30
Friday January 15
IBeam Studios
168 7th Street
Brooklyn
Telluric Currents Series, curated by Jeremiah Cymerman
Dafna Naphtali/Chuck Bettis
Nate Wooley (solo)
Alexander Waterman/Ryan Sawyer (woohoo)/Zach Layton
8 pm
thanks, see you soon! Nate
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Junk Media Review of 7 Storey
The Seven Storey Mountain is trumpeter Nate Wooley’s improvisational enactment of spiritual catharsis. Taking its title from Thomas Merton’s biography of the same name, the record also features Paul Lytton on percussion and David Grubbs on harmonium. The three musicians commit themselves to the paradoxical (and perhaps impossible) task of implying a narrative of spiritual struggle with a minimalist or ‘lowercase’ improv that, strictly speaking, goes nowhere. Although the gestures are largely restrained and the performances subtle, The Seven Storey Mountain is able to evoke a pensive yet at times agonized experience of ecstasy, making explicit what in other performances tends to be a merely suggested spirituality.
Give credit to Wooley for assembling this less-than-obvious lineup. Grubbs is better known for the skewed avant-pop of Gastr Del Sol, and while Paul Lytton may be considered a legend in freely-improvised music, his work tends toward the noisy and manic. The contrasts between the approaches of these musicians are the story here: a group of lowercase all-stars would be less likely to generate the tensions, and therefore suggest the spiritual agonies, endemic to Seven Storey Mountain.
Commissioned for Dave Douglas’ FONT festival in New York, the record consists of one 38-minute piece, performed without pause (and subsequently given the four subtitles “Your Lips,” “Tip,” “Sleep,” and “Turned to Sand”). While the music focuses on the minute gesture, it simultaneously suggests a broader movement. According to Wooley this is a journey through the “dark night of the soul” toward ecstatic knowing, not so much moving as being moved, like existing on a planet that spins underneath you and carries you with it. The sonic field is occupied by a series of drones, consisting variously of Wooley’s electronics, a recording of his A/C unit, Grubbs’ harmonium or a combination of the three. These drones alternate in texture and volume, generating moods of anguish and calm as they do so. The harmonium plays a diminished chord, but these pitches enter the piece as a present fact only, suggesting no movement toward resolution. This is a music of large forces, but Lytton’s junkyard percussion is able to pierce the drones and suggest that they occur in a real (rather than ideal) space. Even though Seven Storey Mountain tells a story of spiritual and mental anguish, this anguish occurs to someone living somewhere, whether that be Merton in Rome or Wooley, Lytton, and Grubbs in New York. Lytton’s percussion also serves as a link between the mechanical drones and the human voice, which serves more as an instrument for producing sound than for articulating words. This muted, but often insistent, voice intones throughout the piece, occasionally becoming a kind of drone itself, but also punctuating the moments of stasis with urgent (if incomprehensible) declarations.
The music on Seven Storey Mountain alternates between moments of charged calm and moments of sturm und drang, the latter serving as instances of crisis largely established through the scattershot pulses of the percussion and voice. Although it’s a cliche to say it, the album demands a close listening (preferably through a decent pair of headphones) in order to focus on the subtle changes that initiate a change in the piece’s mood. The attention that wanders will fail to pick up on the force of the piece, and for good reason: Seven Storey Mountain is the story of intense self-examination, and in such meditation, wandering recovers its etymological relation with sin. Wooley, Lytton, and Grubbs have exemplarily created a space for the reflective and attentive listener, but they make no concessions. Seven Storey Mountain is the greater for their efforts.
Brent Mix
December 21, 2009
Give credit to Wooley for assembling this less-than-obvious lineup. Grubbs is better known for the skewed avant-pop of Gastr Del Sol, and while Paul Lytton may be considered a legend in freely-improvised music, his work tends toward the noisy and manic. The contrasts between the approaches of these musicians are the story here: a group of lowercase all-stars would be less likely to generate the tensions, and therefore suggest the spiritual agonies, endemic to Seven Storey Mountain.
Commissioned for Dave Douglas’ FONT festival in New York, the record consists of one 38-minute piece, performed without pause (and subsequently given the four subtitles “Your Lips,” “Tip,” “Sleep,” and “Turned to Sand”). While the music focuses on the minute gesture, it simultaneously suggests a broader movement. According to Wooley this is a journey through the “dark night of the soul” toward ecstatic knowing, not so much moving as being moved, like existing on a planet that spins underneath you and carries you with it. The sonic field is occupied by a series of drones, consisting variously of Wooley’s electronics, a recording of his A/C unit, Grubbs’ harmonium or a combination of the three. These drones alternate in texture and volume, generating moods of anguish and calm as they do so. The harmonium plays a diminished chord, but these pitches enter the piece as a present fact only, suggesting no movement toward resolution. This is a music of large forces, but Lytton’s junkyard percussion is able to pierce the drones and suggest that they occur in a real (rather than ideal) space. Even though Seven Storey Mountain tells a story of spiritual and mental anguish, this anguish occurs to someone living somewhere, whether that be Merton in Rome or Wooley, Lytton, and Grubbs in New York. Lytton’s percussion also serves as a link between the mechanical drones and the human voice, which serves more as an instrument for producing sound than for articulating words. This muted, but often insistent, voice intones throughout the piece, occasionally becoming a kind of drone itself, but also punctuating the moments of stasis with urgent (if incomprehensible) declarations.
The music on Seven Storey Mountain alternates between moments of charged calm and moments of sturm und drang, the latter serving as instances of crisis largely established through the scattershot pulses of the percussion and voice. Although it’s a cliche to say it, the album demands a close listening (preferably through a decent pair of headphones) in order to focus on the subtle changes that initiate a change in the piece’s mood. The attention that wanders will fail to pick up on the force of the piece, and for good reason: Seven Storey Mountain is the story of intense self-examination, and in such meditation, wandering recovers its etymological relation with sin. Wooley, Lytton, and Grubbs have exemplarily created a space for the reflective and attentive listener, but they make no concessions. Seven Storey Mountain is the greater for their efforts.
Brent Mix
December 21, 2009
Holiday Greetings
So, here is a little holiday reading for you, was going to go with something between Miracle on 34th street and the Peanuts Christmas special, but just had this conversation and it seemed like I needed to write it down....oh, and there is some shameless plugging at the bottom, as always.
Keep in mind that this is a bit long and ranty, so please feel free to delete or skip to the bottom (not that you have to have my permission)
The Players:
Toby (a twenty something idealist in a big puffy down jacket conveniently zipped up to "almost" cover his Greenpeace t-shirt, and hiding his clipboard behind his back, standing right in front of my office building)
Nate (a thirty something pessimist in a big puffy amy surplus jacket zipped up to the top of his nose and thinking nasty, nasty thoughts, trying to go into my office building)
Toby: Hi! My name is Toby! What's yours?
Nate: What?
Toby: My name is Toby (extends hand for warm and meaningful shake). What's your name?Nate: Don't do that, man.
Toby: Don't do what?
Nate: Don't be disingenuous to sell me a bunch of shit.
Toby: Excuse me?
Nate: Don't pretend that you are interested in me, just to get me to buy whatever you're selling. It's dishonest. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Toby: I'm not selling anything
Nate: Oh, really? I'm sorry, my mistake. So, you're just standing out here in front of this building in the asscold to make friends?
Toby: Yup! (extends hand again)
Nate: Cool, so we're friends now?
Toby: As soon as you tell me your name
Nate: Awesome, my name is Nate. Hey, since we are friends now, would you mind if my wife and I came over for Christmas eve? Our family isn't in New York and it would be nice to spend it with some good friends.
Toby: Oh, I don't think we're quite that close (winks)
Nate: Oh, really. I thought we were friends, maybe we are more of friendly acquaintances?Toby: Yeah, that's it.
Nate: Cool, hey what do you say we shoot the shit about girls, huh? That girl is hot, eh?
Toby: That isn't really appropriate
Nate: You're right. You're absolutely right. I guess I got carried away with some locker room talk because I was just hanging here with my friendly acquaintance Toby
Toby: Yeah, well...
Nate: So, maybe we are just acquaintances.
Toby: Yeah, it seems that way.
Nate: Right, hey, what is your last name, where do you live?
Toby: Excuse me?
Nate: Well, I know the last name and general neighborhood of most acquaintances, that's usually the first things you make small talk about
Toby: I don't really want to tell you that
Nate: Oh, I see, so you know what it sounds like to me, Toby? It sounds to me like we are strangers. Would you agree? This is fine, but you see, I don't like strangers forcing their way into my personal space in front of my place of work and trying to sell me shit. I also don't like when they try and be sly and cover up their Greenpeace t-shirt and hide their clipboard. You have to admit that that is pretty disingenuous behavior. Don't you? Don't you think that maybe all the people on this street are sick of people with fake good will trying to sell us shit, like some kind of psycho-economic bait and switch? "Here, I want to be your friend, will you sign this sheet to keep whales alive?" I love whales, but I don't want to be coerced or guilted or otherwise bamboozled into anything with the promise of human warmth. Does your grandmother know you are doing this? I bet she would tan your ass. This is not the way that people interact. I have no problem with your job, I know you probably need the bread, but don't bullshit us. Just stand up with your whale flag flying and ask if I want to give money to Greenpeace, you chickenshit.
Toby: Okay, do you want to give money to Greenpeace?
Nate: Not to you
Toby: Fuck you Nate
Nate: Fuck you too Toby.
Ahhhhh, I love Christmas. Admittedly, I may be becoming a curmudgeon. My deep apologies to Toby wherever he is.
Now, I'm going to take my own advice and say this:You should listen to Scott McDowell's Long Rally. He'll soon be posting the complete live sessions that I did with Chris Corsano and C. Spencer Yeh, including a live version of the second installment of Seven Storey Mountain. You can find him at wfmu.org
I love you guys,
Nate
Keep in mind that this is a bit long and ranty, so please feel free to delete or skip to the bottom (not that you have to have my permission)
The Players:
Toby (a twenty something idealist in a big puffy down jacket conveniently zipped up to "almost" cover his Greenpeace t-shirt, and hiding his clipboard behind his back, standing right in front of my office building)
Nate (a thirty something pessimist in a big puffy amy surplus jacket zipped up to the top of his nose and thinking nasty, nasty thoughts, trying to go into my office building)
Toby: Hi! My name is Toby! What's yours?
Nate: What?
Toby: My name is Toby (extends hand for warm and meaningful shake). What's your name?Nate: Don't do that, man.
Toby: Don't do what?
Nate: Don't be disingenuous to sell me a bunch of shit.
Toby: Excuse me?
Nate: Don't pretend that you are interested in me, just to get me to buy whatever you're selling. It's dishonest. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Toby: I'm not selling anything
Nate: Oh, really? I'm sorry, my mistake. So, you're just standing out here in front of this building in the asscold to make friends?
Toby: Yup! (extends hand again)
Nate: Cool, so we're friends now?
Toby: As soon as you tell me your name
Nate: Awesome, my name is Nate. Hey, since we are friends now, would you mind if my wife and I came over for Christmas eve? Our family isn't in New York and it would be nice to spend it with some good friends.
Toby: Oh, I don't think we're quite that close (winks)
Nate: Oh, really. I thought we were friends, maybe we are more of friendly acquaintances?Toby: Yeah, that's it.
Nate: Cool, hey what do you say we shoot the shit about girls, huh? That girl is hot, eh?
Toby: That isn't really appropriate
Nate: You're right. You're absolutely right. I guess I got carried away with some locker room talk because I was just hanging here with my friendly acquaintance Toby
Toby: Yeah, well...
Nate: So, maybe we are just acquaintances.
Toby: Yeah, it seems that way.
Nate: Right, hey, what is your last name, where do you live?
Toby: Excuse me?
Nate: Well, I know the last name and general neighborhood of most acquaintances, that's usually the first things you make small talk about
Toby: I don't really want to tell you that
Nate: Oh, I see, so you know what it sounds like to me, Toby? It sounds to me like we are strangers. Would you agree? This is fine, but you see, I don't like strangers forcing their way into my personal space in front of my place of work and trying to sell me shit. I also don't like when they try and be sly and cover up their Greenpeace t-shirt and hide their clipboard. You have to admit that that is pretty disingenuous behavior. Don't you? Don't you think that maybe all the people on this street are sick of people with fake good will trying to sell us shit, like some kind of psycho-economic bait and switch? "Here, I want to be your friend, will you sign this sheet to keep whales alive?" I love whales, but I don't want to be coerced or guilted or otherwise bamboozled into anything with the promise of human warmth. Does your grandmother know you are doing this? I bet she would tan your ass. This is not the way that people interact. I have no problem with your job, I know you probably need the bread, but don't bullshit us. Just stand up with your whale flag flying and ask if I want to give money to Greenpeace, you chickenshit.
Toby: Okay, do you want to give money to Greenpeace?
Nate: Not to you
Toby: Fuck you Nate
Nate: Fuck you too Toby.
Ahhhhh, I love Christmas. Admittedly, I may be becoming a curmudgeon. My deep apologies to Toby wherever he is.
Now, I'm going to take my own advice and say this:You should listen to Scott McDowell's Long Rally. He'll soon be posting the complete live sessions that I did with Chris Corsano and C. Spencer Yeh, including a live version of the second installment of Seven Storey Mountain. You can find him at wfmu.org
I love you guys,
Nate
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