Ever since I first saw this piece in the early 1990s, I've wanted to take a photo inside it. It's the perfect apotheosis of narcissism—the preoccupa-tion with yourself in the mirror raised to some astronomically high power—yet virtually every photo I shot in there came out terribly. It's very difficult to capture on film (or pixels, in this case) how strange the feeling is to be inside a ten-by-ten room lined with mirrors—the submarinish green tint to the light, the infinitely retreating images on all sides, the way the line of the corners' meeting always crops out your eyes. The first problem is simply that any time you hold the camera up to shoot, you find you're always in your own way. You lose the peripheral multitudes and all you see is that one single image of yourself, with only a faint halo of other self-images around it. A second, more significant problem is that it's hard to shoot in such a small space without the door—which is propped permanently open—intruding into the frame and spoiling the shot. If it were closed, one could be surrounded purely and wholly by images of only one's self. But then, of course, there wouldn't be any light. Apparently, even in moments of total narcissism, one still has to allow a small gap to let in the outside world.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Lucas Samaras—Mirrored Room
Ever since I first saw this piece in the early 1990s, I've wanted to take a photo inside it. It's the perfect apotheosis of narcissism—the preoccupa-tion with yourself in the mirror raised to some astronomically high power—yet virtually every photo I shot in there came out terribly. It's very difficult to capture on film (or pixels, in this case) how strange the feeling is to be inside a ten-by-ten room lined with mirrors—the submarinish green tint to the light, the infinitely retreating images on all sides, the way the line of the corners' meeting always crops out your eyes. The first problem is simply that any time you hold the camera up to shoot, you find you're always in your own way. You lose the peripheral multitudes and all you see is that one single image of yourself, with only a faint halo of other self-images around it. A second, more significant problem is that it's hard to shoot in such a small space without the door—which is propped permanently open—intruding into the frame and spoiling the shot. If it were closed, one could be surrounded purely and wholly by images of only one's self. But then, of course, there wouldn't be any light. Apparently, even in moments of total narcissism, one still has to allow a small gap to let in the outside world.
Sunday, December 3, 2006
Cat Power—The Greatest
After years of stumbling across reviews of her, all tinged with a certain nimbus of fascinated horror like the backflaps of the Oscar Wilde books I used to pull off my father's bookshelves ("talented, yes, but so personally distressing!"), I finally sprang for "The Greatest." My first reaction was disappointment—I always hope women who come with a reputation like this will simply rip the top off things, but instead the CD starts off with a dirge-like piano floating on a wave of over-orchestrated strings vaguely redolent of "Moon River." 
Repeated listenings, though, convince me that she is perhaps the eeriest pop vocalist I've ever heard. She has an unexpectedly husky voice for someone so frail looking, with a slight gospel-blues coloring that places her ambiguously along the racial spectrum, but most of all it's the incredibly intimate feeling her voice conjures up. Despite the presence of backing musicians, and elliptical lyrics that suggest deeply personal associations without spelling them out, listening to her is an almost voyeuristic thrill, like pausing under the window of a musician playing for herself alone in the middle of the night. I'm reminded of Laura Nyro, sometimes of Tom Waits, sometimes of Lucinda Williams, sometimes of Townes Van Zandt—all highly ideosyncratic singer/songwriters with a strong melodic streak who made/make their perilous ways along the edge of the pit of American popular music. Over the last three listenings, I've become fixated on "Willie," a dreamily lilting piano piece that tells the story of a hopeless loser, or perhaps a winner despite it all, or perhaps it's all about her . . . it's hard to tell. She has the ability to give wispy lyrics the feeling of enormous import. It's a particular talent, to render a line like "I'm on the same side as you / I'm just a little bit behind" so that you want to weep when you hear it, and each time you hear it, you want to weep even more.
Repeated listenings, though, convince me that she is perhaps the eeriest pop vocalist I've ever heard. She has an unexpectedly husky voice for someone so frail looking, with a slight gospel-blues coloring that places her ambiguously along the racial spectrum, but most of all it's the incredibly intimate feeling her voice conjures up. Despite the presence of backing musicians, and elliptical lyrics that suggest deeply personal associations without spelling them out, listening to her is an almost voyeuristic thrill, like pausing under the window of a musician playing for herself alone in the middle of the night. I'm reminded of Laura Nyro, sometimes of Tom Waits, sometimes of Lucinda Williams, sometimes of Townes Van Zandt—all highly ideosyncratic singer/songwriters with a strong melodic streak who made/make their perilous ways along the edge of the pit of American popular music. Over the last three listenings, I've become fixated on "Willie," a dreamily lilting piano piece that tells the story of a hopeless loser, or perhaps a winner despite it all, or perhaps it's all about her . . . it's hard to tell. She has the ability to give wispy lyrics the feeling of enormous import. It's a particular talent, to render a line like "I'm on the same side as you / I'm just a little bit behind" so that you want to weep when you hear it, and each time you hear it, you want to weep even more.
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