Josh Keyes

As a kid, I was always fascinated with atlases and geography books. It wasn’t just the maps and their inherent sense of possibility and mystery; it was the detailed diagrams exhibiting earth science and the natural landscape that excited me.

Looking at a monochromatic continent littered with dots, stars and foreign names that was edged by an equally dull blue mass certainly inspired a sense of wonder. But the visual image was still so bland--lifeless and insipid. Tracing lines with my finger, surveying borders and imagining physical features, never set my mind reeling quite like a cross-section of our incomprehensibly giant planet, split down the middle like a halved apple. Or a slice of the rainforest, cut cleanly from the wilds of Brazil and illustrated with detail and clarity. Here, I could see the layers of the earth, the mantle confining the molten core. I could examine the strata of a jungle, the canopy teeming with just as much drawn fauna as the floor. There were solid blocks of ocean (surface to bottom), the water, sediment and sea life contained by invisible walls, where I could consider the levels and depth of the Pacific and how the change in temperature and light affected its ecosystem. Diagrams like these weren’t just visually stimulating; they helped me contextualize a map. The scale and scope of the dioramic graphics, often given a quarter-turn to show more dimension, could be applied to the featureless surfaces of the maps, making them more lively.

And so it was with great pleasure that I stumbled upon Josh Keyes’ work in an art magazine. He is an Oakland-based artist who paints almost exclusively in acrylics. His pieces recall those same vintage-science-book diagrams, hyper-realistic but with a mysterious and sometimes unsettling juxtaposition between the natural world and the man-made landscape. Conclude what you will.

The Efficacy of Complaining About Things One Cannot Control...

...specifically the weather.

The people of Portland (and most of the great state of Oregon) are in the thick of a heat wave. This particular heat wave is not unlike the heat waves we experience every summer, yet something’s different this time. Yes, it is certainly hot outside. No, it is no hotter than the hottest days we had last summer or even the summer before. Still, what’s strange is the amount of complaints I’m seeing and hearing.

I have a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m assuming you have some understanding of both of these social networking platforms. Both sites have a homepage that lets you see what all your ‘friends’ want you to see in the form of ‘status updates’ on Facebook and ‘tweets’ on Twitter. These can range from details as mundane and pointless as “my dog just farted” or “I have smelly feet” to earth-shattering news like “I cast my vote for Mousavi but Ahmadinejad’s goons didn’t count it” and “holy shit, I just saw Lindsey Lohan leaving a club.” In addition, users can share photos, videos and links that they think their ‘friends’ might find interesting (I’m using interesting in the loosest sense of the word).

This week, instead of the usual ‘updates’ and ‘tweets’ regarding current events and happenings, vacation photos and remarkable videos, I’ve been bombarded with a deluge of gripes. A solid 90% of my homepage is composed of folks whining about the heat. Granted, it’s pretty damn hot out, even at night. But complaining about the weather solves nothing. It doesn’t make one cooler. It just makes one a crybaby.

To clarify, updating or tweeting something along the lines of “I’m hella hot” or “it’s hella hot” cannot be considered a complaint as much as an observation, albeit an arguably trivial one, whereas posting something like “I’m melting in this heat; I hate it--kill me now” or “this is hell--someone should either nuke the sun or kill me now” is nothing more than an ineffective protest, a futile grouse with no hope of resolution. Humanity has been, is, and (to a certain degree) will always be at the mercy of the weather and mother nature at large. Grumbling does not beget relief.

Perhaps the intention of the malcontents is not just moaning about the heat. Maybe they are seeking sympathy. Maybe they are reaching out to their online network of ‘friends’ for some sense of communal misery, some indication that they aren’t alone in being hot. I suppose this is one of the many functions of social networking, to connect like-minded and temperature-affected individuals. Whatever my friends’ aim, they won’t find sympathy from me. I’m hot too. We’re all hot. But really, what good can come out of complaining about something we can’t hope to change? Let’s just deal with it. Together. On Facebook. With less bellyaching.

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The goods are over at gimdang.tumblr.

An Argument Against The Fadeout

Songs are like stories. Not inasmuch as they necessarily tell a tale or contain a narrative but because they have a beginning and an end. This cannot be refuted; a song starts and, with the passage of time, it reaches an end. Also like stories, some are good and some are bad. This judgment can sometimes be made on the strength of the song’s (or story’s) ending. For me, an ending doesn’t necessarily make the song. By that token, neither does the beginning. I’ve always judged a song’s merit on the sum of its parts rather than the coolness (or uncoolness) of one particular part. A good song always seems to be more about the journey than the destination anyway—the means to the end and not the end in and of itself. Still, a discernible ending is absolutely necessary. It’s the final piece of the puzzle. It’s the curtains. Without it, listeners can be left wondering whether something is amiss or whether or not the song has in fact ended. The sense of finality provided by an actual ending completes the composition and effectively wraps up the entire package (sometimes with a pretty little bow, sometimes with a smoldering bag and shit on your shoe). That’s why the fadeout, a commonly heard ‘ending’ in recorded music, is a total copout.

Now when I say fadeout, I mean the gradual decrease in volume until sound can no longer be heard. To be clear, the fading out of a single note or chord is natural and thus acceptable (a perfect example: the singular ringing chord at the end of The Beatles’ “A Day in The Life”) but the fading out of instruments at play is not (example: the full band’s playing and singing of the chorus that closes “Lucy in The Sky with Diamonds”). I’m sure there exist exceptions to my rule, but I don’t feel like getting that specific.

I see the fadeout as the easy way out of a song, the lazy songwriter’s ending. Why go to all the trouble to write an ending when you can just slowly dial down the master volume? It’s as if a simple coordinated stop at a certain point in a song is too much for a band to handle.

I should clarify something: just because you let a song fade out doesn’t mean you suck or that your song sucks. Hell, all the greats have done it. Capable bands like The Band have used the fadeout. “When You Awake” from 1969 inexplicably fades out in the middle of a verse before Rick Danko even stops playing (let alone singing). The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” arguably the greatest rock song ever (I don’t think so), fades out before satisfactorily ending. Steely Dan even goes so far as to fade out “Kid Charlemagne” while Larry Carlton solos. That’s like turning the lights out on Picasso, making him finish painting in the dark and never letting anyone see the finished product. In odd instances like these, my guess is that the fadeout wasn’t the songwriter’s original intention. Maybe the tape was damaged beyond repair and the band decided to do a fadeout instead of re-recording the song for whatever legitimate reason. Perhaps too, the fadeout was part of the plan all along.

Some argue that the fadeout is as artistic a statement as a well-written ending, making the end of the song less abrupt and lending to a tacit sense of continuation that might be best summarized by country supergroup The Highwaymen when they sing “the road goes on forever and the party never ends.” I concede that some songs with fadeouts are so great that an actual ending would be too climactic or almost sad in a way. The journey’s so extraordinary that the destination can only be a letdown. It’s like when the Griswolds finally make it to Wally World just to find it closed for business. “Sweet Jane” by The Velvet Underground, David Bowie’s “Drive-In Saturday,” Neil Young’s “Cowgirl in The Sand” and “Mambo Sun” by T.Rex would all sound strangely interrupted with an actual ending in place of their slow, almost unnoticeable fadeouts. However, when these songs were performed live, they had to have some kind of explicit ending. Otherwise nobody would know when to clap and go “whooo.”

The way I see it, it’s better to burn out than to fade away (in music, not life).