Rocket Juice Is the Secret Sauce
Journeyed over the River That Runs Both Ways to the newly opened ramen parlor & cheap movies.
I saw A Complete Unknown. With Belinda. Who promptly fell asleep: Belinda married at 20 to get out of an unhappy home, so the pop culture currents that propelled so many of the rest of us did not move her. Essentially she lived the same life her mother did in the 1940s & ‘50s except with different cars. I suspect pop music was never a big thing for her.
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A Complete Unknown is not a bad movie, but it’s also not a particularly consequential movie. What I liked best about it was the art direction: New York City in the 1960s! The New York City I grew up in!
But there’s only room in my heart for one Orpheus who can’t really sing. Mine is Tom Waits. Who was obvs hugely influenced by Dylan but whose persona-“brand” if you will-is a lot edgier, a lot darker, more perpetually hung over.
Both were obvs influenced by the Beats. There’s a great scene toward the beginning of D.A, Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back where Dylan attempts to explain his song-writing technique. He would write reams & reams of words on a piece of paper & then fold the paper up like origami and whatever made it on the surface of that origami became the lyrics of the song. Essentially a variation on William Burroughs’ collage technique, which Dylan freely acknowledged.
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Another William Burroughs habit that Dylan picked up was junk. Dylan did a lot of heroin & speed during the early 60s (a fact confirmed in later interviews with John Lennon & others.) A Complete Unknown sanitizes that part of the creation myth. Which is fine-it’s not a documentary, after all. But, you know. You don’t drive yourself so relentlessly to the top of the pop culture pyramid on talent alone. Rocket juice is almost always the secret sauce.
Though, of course, that rocket juice is not always drugs.
And the movie isn’t a manual about how to become one of the biggest pop culture icons of all time.
Do people even want to become pop culture icons anymore?
I wonder.
Social media does seem to promote lurker culture.
Very few people seem to be interested in having active imaginations anymore.
###
In other news, my premium LJ account expired. I would continue to pay for LJ if I could since I cross post regularly from DW, and like a good little libertarian, I prefer to pay for services I use. There are a lot of writers (and friends!) I enjoy on LJ, and I would prefer to remain connected to them. But American credit cards will not pay for Russian services.
Not sure if this is an actual problem.
But if it turns out to be, I will delete my LJ account.
I saw A Complete Unknown. With Belinda. Who promptly fell asleep: Belinda married at 20 to get out of an unhappy home, so the pop culture currents that propelled so many of the rest of us did not move her. Essentially she lived the same life her mother did in the 1940s & ‘50s except with different cars. I suspect pop music was never a big thing for her.
###
A Complete Unknown is not a bad movie, but it’s also not a particularly consequential movie. What I liked best about it was the art direction: New York City in the 1960s! The New York City I grew up in!
But there’s only room in my heart for one Orpheus who can’t really sing. Mine is Tom Waits. Who was obvs hugely influenced by Dylan but whose persona-“brand” if you will-is a lot edgier, a lot darker, more perpetually hung over.
Both were obvs influenced by the Beats. There’s a great scene toward the beginning of D.A, Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back where Dylan attempts to explain his song-writing technique. He would write reams & reams of words on a piece of paper & then fold the paper up like origami and whatever made it on the surface of that origami became the lyrics of the song. Essentially a variation on William Burroughs’ collage technique, which Dylan freely acknowledged.
###
Another William Burroughs habit that Dylan picked up was junk. Dylan did a lot of heroin & speed during the early 60s (a fact confirmed in later interviews with John Lennon & others.) A Complete Unknown sanitizes that part of the creation myth. Which is fine-it’s not a documentary, after all. But, you know. You don’t drive yourself so relentlessly to the top of the pop culture pyramid on talent alone. Rocket juice is almost always the secret sauce.
Though, of course, that rocket juice is not always drugs.
And the movie isn’t a manual about how to become one of the biggest pop culture icons of all time.
Do people even want to become pop culture icons anymore?
I wonder.
Social media does seem to promote lurker culture.
Very few people seem to be interested in having active imaginations anymore.
###
In other news, my premium LJ account expired. I would continue to pay for LJ if I could since I cross post regularly from DW, and like a good little libertarian, I prefer to pay for services I use. There are a lot of writers (and friends!) I enjoy on LJ, and I would prefer to remain connected to them. But American credit cards will not pay for Russian services.
Not sure if this is an actual problem.
But if it turns out to be, I will delete my LJ account.