I want to be clear that when I say that this blog post will contain a 2-piece collage, I only mean that I taped one piece of paper on top of another piece of paper. I put it at the end of the post, so you'll have to scroll really far down to see it – the muscles in your finger will probably be aching by the time you’re done scrolling. (I’m assuming that you use your finger’s muscles to scroll down the screen; but perhaps I’m wrong – perhaps screen scrolling is a task that is now voice-activated. In that case, your voice will probably be hoarse from saying "Please scroll down another screen-length, HAL.")
The parenthetical remark that ends the above paragraph was a reference to the supercomputer HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is rumored to have been released in 1968. That’s about nine years before two other famous movies were released: George Lucas's first Star Wars film, and David Lynch's Eraserhead. The year was 1977. (Incidentally, I myself was released that year as well.)
The parenthetical remark that ends the above paragraph is no joke. If it is ever proven wrong, the reason for my stating this falsehood is that I was misinformed.
RONNIE ROCKET
The recent news that David Lynch is officially deciding to add new episodes to the Twin Peaks series caused me to write a few words about his unfinished movie Ronnie Rocket, which is the early project that I’m hoping he someday gets a chance to realize. (After his first feature-length movie Eraserhead, Lynch's intention was to begin Ronnie Rocket: he wrote the screenplay and wanted to start working on the film; but, like most truly genius ideas, no moneymen would dare to finance it; so he set it aside, and to this day the film remains unmade.) This morning, my friend and I were talking about this subject; and this caused me to copy a couple of quotations from Chris Rodley’s book of interviews with Lynch called Lynch on Lynch. I’ll paste the excerpts below, for safe keeping.
Before I paste them, though, I want to make a clever joke. I’m sure that someone somewhere out there in cyberspace has made this clever joke already; but, since I don’t know how to turn on my computer, I assume that I’m the first to think this up. Here is my clever joke:
CLEVER JOKE
Instead of adding new shows to the Twin Peaks series, Lynch should return to the old episodes and digitally insert Jar Jar Binks into every scene.
*
Chris Rodley's interviews with David Lynch:
(The following exchanges are all from the book LYNCH ON LYNCH. This first one is from chapter 3: 'I See Myself'.)
RODLEY:
When he reviewed Blue Velvet, novelist J.G. Ballard said that the film was "like The Wizard of Oz reshot with a script by Franz Kafka and decor by Francis Bacon". Kafka certainly comes to mind in Eraserhead. Do you like his work?
LYNCH:
Yeah. The one artist that I feel could be my brother — and I almost don't like saying it because the reaction is always, "Yeah, you and everybody else" — is Franz Kafka. I really dig him a lot. Some of his things are the most thrilling combos of words I have ever read. If Kafka wrote a crime picture, I'd be there. I'd like to direct that for sure.
*
(From chapter 4: ‘A Bug Dreams of Heaven’)
LYNCH:
...The reception of Eraserhead wasn’t very good, so I had no other propositions. ...I was working on the script for Ronnie Rocket at the time...
RODLEY:
Did any of the major studios call? They usually get round to it, sooner or later.
LYNCH:
I got one call early on to come into a studio and, you know, talk. And in the talk they asked me what I wanted to do. And I told them I wanted to do Ronnie Rocket. And they said, ‘What is it about?’ Since I don’t like to say too much about something, especially when it’s something strange or abstract, I told them that basically it was about electricity and a three-foot guy with red hair. And a few more things. They were very polite, but I never, you know, got a call back. [Laughs.]
RODLEY:
What is it about?
LYNCH:
It’s about the absurd mystery of the strange forces of existence.
*
(From chapter 7: ‘Suddenly My House Became a Tree of Sores’)
RODLEY:
Another otherworldly character who also became extremely important to the look and feel of the series is The Man from Another Place. It’s a shock when he first appears in a murder mystery set in a logging town. How did that character, or abstraction, come about?
LYNCH:
Well, I met Mike Anderson in 1987 – one of the many times I was thinking about gearing up for Ronnie Rocket. I’d seen a short film of him and knew he’d be perfect for the character of Ronnie Rocket. I met him at McGoo’s in downtown NYC, and he was wearing all gold: gold shoes, gold pants, gold jacket. And he was pulling a wagon, I think.
*
Finally, the 2-piece collage:
As promised, here is a snippet of paper from a magazine that is taped over another snippet of paper from a magazine. And the collage itself is photographed against a fuzzy, multihued book cover that slightly resembles a frame.
P.S.
Here’s a casual reading that I did this afternoon: it's Serge Fauchereau's poem "Les premières images de ma vie..." ["The first images of my life"] translated by John Ashbery
Also I re-uploaded Furniture Beat 000014: now, after the break, it cuts straight to the cheesy horns again. And here’s 000015: a sparse & simple beat to be played at weddings.