Loop Roma Motor Club
The bikeriders are back, loops are a hole, and a very Italian birthday.
As one might imagine, post motorcade escapades, The Garage was high on my list of priorities. I was going to take the car to some place out on the nether regions of town but Mr. P had a guy who was somewhat closer to the office, hence I spent a cold twenty minutes on their forecourt first thing. In these situations, I generally try to say as little as possible so as not to make it ever more patently obvious the degree to which my knowledge and/or skillset as it pertains to car stuff is close to a zero sum game. My father would remind me about the screen fluid and explain what that is and where to put it and how much. In turn, I would like to say I remember these valuable life lessons but am unsure of where precisely to file these discrete, presumably quite essential packets of knowledge.
Memories as if from some kind of terrible fever dream have been coming back to me this past week, particularly those that relate to that time nearly five years ago and what I was doing/writing about in the lead-up to shuttering the first incarnation of TNA. It’s strange thinking back to that time, mostly because it was a strange time but also because the space between then and now feels like it’s somehow occurred in far less time than physically possible. There have been…at least two seismic upheavals in the intervening years, a whole lot of stuff that went double down and an equally large quota of shit that got picked up and summarily let go, for one reason or another.
While passages are indeed hazy to the point of near total obfuscation, I quite vividly remember Her in grub format and now she is a whole five-and-a-half years worth of tall. I recall writing tracks for the new album that shall hopefully be this album, which is to say the second one, very much while she was eating lunch in a high chair behind me in the kitchen. I don’t think anyone is about to dispute the myriad ways in which time is weird but it bears repeating.
I have seen both the very good film that they made of this and also ready Larry Clark’s ‘Tulsa’ enough times to know
This is one artefact that I was about to talk to y’all about before I decided to stfu for a good long while. Danny Lyon’s capture of ‘The Bikeriders’ has a similar fever dream quality to it. It is at once a document of people unlike yours truly, Dear Reader. Persons who actually knew their petrol facts. It is also about the descent. The photographs themselves bring to mind more contextual, IRL versions of the individuals from Richard Avedon’s ‘Faces Of The American West’, with every single subject verily “there” in the frame but those frames are every bit as Bruce Davidson in their execution. I’m thinking specifically of ‘Photographs’ and that cigarette machine shot from that cover.
The interviews are a totally complimentary beast. Together, they inspire a lyric at the very least. I want to ride those bikes down those roads with those people, although I have seen both the rather decent film that they made of this and also ready Larry Clark’s ‘Tulsa’ enough times to know how that story ends. Perhaps in another life, where we are a little more lost and a little less inclined to stick around.
The other thing I recall with maximum acuity from this period, i.e. early March 2021 is ‘Loop Hero’. That game was very recently out and I was in it. I played it to death, perhaps up and to the point that I played it enough to preclude actually writing anything real about it or anything else…ever again…in that format. Until now? I almost daren’t boot it up in case I go full “hole” again but it came up on stupid sale yesterday evening and now it’s on The Switch. Or at least, I have a Switch for it to go on. Either way, I recall the core loop being critically apt in both term and mechanic. Moreish doesn’t even begin to cover it.
I am keenly aware of the person I am and usually correct when it comes to my suspicions about him
Were it not for the fact that I am steadfastly dedicated to finishing ‘Cardpocalypse’ before the next apocalypse, I might be tempted to see if I can venture back into its folds but I am keenly aware of the person I am and usually correct when it comes to my suspicions about him; about what may or may not scratch an itch and what instead might drive me to unending, delicious distraction. This is not a path I dare currently venture down but if you didn’t or haven’t and you have a week or two to kill, abandon all hope accordingly.
We are gathering at The Italian’s abode on the morrow, for it is that very specific day of the calendar year on which we celebrate his arrival to this sphere and this plane of existence. Purchasing a gift for him is always both very easy and very difficult. Much like myself, he has distinct sets and subsets of interests, most of which are pretty public and widely known or apparent. At the same time, he is interested and obsessed enough with these subjects that he has seen many if not most things regarding their dissection and has at one time owned much of this material if he does not currently possess it. I am reminded of someone very, very close to me and they are sat in this chair.
the trick lies in finding the songs and beats of that which has yet to be optioned by the beholder
The Rolling Stones…vinyl…books about the Rolling Stones or vinyl by the Rolling Stones? Lou Reed? Iggy? The pattern in his case is music and/or bella Roma (the above shot was taken in the too-beautiful-it-might-be-fictional Fossa Nova Abbey, a short-ish train ride meets car hop from the deathless city itself) but the trick lies in finding the songs and beats of that which has yet to be optioned by the beholder. I looked today for related chintz in a flea market type place and came up with diddly. I searched the day before in a fresh establishment where the books live and returned with squat. Times are getting desperate but inspiration may have just walked into the frame…
JD out.