On Saturday, May 21, I’ll be joining Ryan Germick onstage at the music and technology festival Moogfest for a conversation. It’s a just a quick stop on the way home from Atlanta’s HOW Design Live, but it sounded like fun and I always enjoy speaking with Ryan. No big deal, except for one thing: Moogfest is in Durham, North Carolina.

North Carolina recently passed House Bill 2, widely and rightly condemned for its treatment of transgender people. An encouragingly long list of corporations, performers, and other public figures have called out North Carolina for what they felt was a hateful and ignorant law—’cause it is—and a number of boycotts followed.

The musicians and other creative types involved with Moogfest, though, have decided to stay and protest. So barring any change of plans by that community, it looks like I’ll be there with them. I don’t know if my voice will make much difference (I’m not a headliner or anything, just a small fish in that extremely cool pond) but I’ll add my voice to theirs as best I can.

One of my most important early musical experiences, when I was still in elementary school, was listening to the electronic music of the artist then known as “Walter” Carlos. I used to sit in my father’s big easy chair, between the speakers, and slow down Carlos’ Baroque albums to half speed and listen to each and every note as if transcribing a conversation. I was fascinated by that musical landscape, and by later original compositions on A Clockwork Orange and other recordings.

Moogfest is named for Robert Moog, late father of the Moog synthesizer, which was used on those recordings. He was a good friend of Walter so far as I know, and a good friend still when Walter became Wendy; one of the first public figures to undergo gender reassignment surgery.

Wendy Carlos is a Trans icon today; a musical pioneer but also a social one. She helped usher in the future on two fronts. In that spirit, I’m glad to see Moogfest doing what they can to oppose those who want to drag society back into the past.

Here’s the MoogFest official statement opposing HB2.

Okay, this has nothing to do with comics, but it’s on my mind, so…

Sky and I have noticed a difference between bands of my generation, and more recent bands we like.

Whereas old bands like Boston, Chicago, and Kansas all formed in the city or state they’re named for, check out these geographically baffling examples from recent years…

Of Montreal: From Athens, Georgia.

Architecture in Helsinki: From Australia.

The Middle East: Also from Australia!

Beirut: From Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I’m From Barcelona: From Sweden.

So what’s up, global music scene? Why are you messing with our heads??

Here’s a cool project: A comics anthology site adapting all 69 love songs from 69 Love Songs, the legendary album from The Magnetic Fields.

If I had the spare time, I so would’ve taken a crack at The Book Of Love…

[Thanks to our friend Kate for the link]

Okay, it’s a bit short on details, but why do I get the feeling that things are about to get very interesting out there?

Back home from our first-ever visit to New Zealand and the family (Ivy, Sky, and I, with the role of Winter being played by Sky’s friend Kendra) had a fantastic time.

Webstock was top notch. Hung out with and loved performances by Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley, met great brains like David McCandless, Peter Sunde, and Tom Coates, played Werewolf for the first time (Go, Villagers!), and had lots of good food and good conversations.

Wellington is a beautiful city. We’re so adding it to The List (our friends will know what I mean).

Big shout out to the 40 or so wonderful cartoonists we met this weekend in both Wellington and Auckland. You guys rock.

And thanks of course to Dylan Horrocks, ambassador for the Kiwi comics nation, our host in Auckland with his adorable family, and one of our favorite people in all of comics.

Back to the drawing board!

Some random notes from the last nine days.

Got an email from Ryan Estrada this morning announcing his latest insanity, the One Month Animated Feature. Actually sounds like a fun project. I wish him luck. Also sleep, when it’s done.

Really enjoyed the first volume of X’ed Out, the new Charles Burns series. Eager to read more.

Okay, the end of Walking Dead Episode 3… How many saw that coming halfway through #2? Show of hands. (Failed surprises aside, I’m really enjoying that series).

Via Ivy (who got it from Stephen Fry), we’ve all been enjoying the Hell out of this video.

After largely missing them in New Orleans due to explodey-chest syndrome, I had the pleasure of seeing Neil and Amanda at a great engagement party at agent-extraordinaire Jon Levin’s house Saturday. Lots of new and old friends there, but I have to make special mention of Stephin Merritt, who I’d never met before but is one of my favorite songwriters. We’d just watched Pieces of April two nights before (a Thanksgiving tradition in our home) which has songs by Merritt in it, so he was on our mind already.

Speaking of music: Two recent buys I can’t get enough of are “If You Return” by Maximum Balloon (with vocals by Little Dragon) and the criminally-catching “L.O.V.” by Fitz and the Tantrums.

Back to the drawing board!

Okay, it has nothing to do with comics, but wow, what a great performance. We’re talking me watching on an iPhone at a Payless Shoe Store and getting a tear in my eye. Seriously. Janelle Monáe. Janelle Monáe. Janelle Monáe. Damn…

Anyway, I was talking to our friend Matt yesterday about death music (note change of subject, since the above video is 100% LIFE) and he volunteered Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song” before I could, but that one is definitely on the list. Got me thinking again about my own short list of death songs.

By “death songs” I don’t mean songs with lyrics about death, or music with a morbid style. I mean music that takes you right to edge of what-it-is-to-die. Existentially transportive songs, if that makes any sense.

On my list:

“River Man” by Nick Drake
“Pyramind Song” by Radiohead
“Meeting Across the River” by Bruce Springsteen
“Wayfaring Stranger” The Charlie Haden Quartet West
“Old Man” by Randy Newman
Chopin’s Nocturne in C Sharp Minor (personal connection there)
Purcell’s “Man that is Born” from the Funeral for Queen Mary
The theme for NPR’s “Selected Shorts.” Not sure why.

What’s on your list?

I’m even okay with the ’60s Batman-style sound effects! Thanks, everyone I’ve ever known for telling me about this as soon as I got home.

Oh, and hey, as long as it’s Random Friday, I’ve got a question: I’m dying to find a reeeeeally old music video from the ’80s—maybe even pre-MTV. It had a funky, electronic song (possibly no words) with black and white, photocopy-style animation. There was a recurring assembly line motif with hamburgers and hands and that creepy masonic eye/pyramid thing. Really cool and jerky, almost like it was made by a robot Terry Gilliam. Does anyone remember this video? I’d love to find it out there somewhere but I don’t know anything about the director or even the musician(s) involved.

UPDATE: It was the experimental film “Machine Song” by Chel White. Thanks to music video master Alex de Campi for the answer!

As some of you might have guessed, based on past blog entries, music is very important to our whole family. Sky is going to Coachella this year with a friend of ours and I’m envious, but after Italy, I’m going to be too eager to get back to work on the book, so I’ve got to miss it yet again.

I love that my daughter has been listening to bands like Passion Pit, Hot Chip, and Vampire Weekend* (all at Coachella) while simultaneously getting into Bob Dylan and Bob Marley, on LP no less—and that I had nothing to do with those last two. Well, any of them technically, (though I did discover Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros before her).

I used music constantly while working on the first draft of the layouts for the new book. I had several different playlists for different kinds of scenes and I’d go for long walks trying to imagine sequences, while letting the music sustain the mood I was going for.

Recently though, I mentioned this to my Mom over the phone and she said she hoped I took the headphones off once in a while to listen to the sounds around me too. (Which is both reasonable, and exactly the kind of thing you count on a Mom to say.)

Funny thing is, though, I’ve discovered that music actually distracts me during those walks now that I’ve entered the rewriting stage of the layouts. Keeping a sustained mood through music actually makes it harder to step back and consider the structure of a scene or set of scenes in my head, and how to change them for the better, or to implement the suggestions of my panel of “kibitzers.”

That trance I needed to put myself in while conceiving sequences would now prevent me from evaluating those scenes objectively. More proof, if any was needed, that we need to appeal to different aspects of our creative personality at different stages of the creative process.

Hm. This post is like a Simpsons episode. One thing leads to another and…

Uh.

See you Monday!

*Pop Quiz: If I added Peter Gabriel’s name to those three band names and asked you which of the four was not like the others, which would you pick and why?

Belated Happy Birthday to Ivy! We went to Disneyland for her birthday on Tuesday after a very full day of work Monday, and yesterday was a lot printing and mailing, so I didn’t get much blogging, tweeting, or, um… facing… in this week.

Round One of the “rough draft” for the graphic novel is done! I’ll be working on revisions/rewrites for the next couple of months and then, starting in March, I’ll be doing finished art for two years. The book is currently at a whopping 461 pages, but I’m hoping it’ll get shorter in revisions. (Note that my “rough draft” is basically just a rough sketched-out version of what the finished book will look like, all captions and balloons in).

Fun fact: My roughs are done forty pages at a time in a single photoshop document so I can slide panels back and forth and think of the flow more organically and not let the page dictate pacing too much. They’re really big files!

The whole family is getting into the Avett Brothers this year.

Winter and I finally finished watching Deathnote on DVD. All the kids in anime club were yelling at her to finish it already so they could talk about it. That is one crazy show! (And oh, man, that opening theme and animation for Season 2…)

Still loving Mad Men.

The preview for Iron Man 2 makes me feel 14 years old again. In a good way.

Best comic of the year? For me, probably Asterios Polyp, but now that I have a bit of free time, I need to read a few more contenders.

Creatively, I thought 2009 was a great year for comics, music, and movies. Financially, though, it sucked donkey balls for a lot of people in our community. Let’s hope ’10 is better.

Happy New Year!

I couldn’t even tell you the lyrics to a lot of my favorite songs. I usually fall in love with the music itself, even if the lyrics are a muddled blur.

But there are a few songs I love for the lyrics. Below are fragments from some of my favorites. I’d be curious to know how many of you recognize them (without Googling of course) and I’d love to hear some of yours.

1
Hair blowing in the hot wind
Time hanging from a clothespin
There’s no sorrow that the sun’s not gonna heal

2
Bowel shaking earthquakes of doubt and remorse
Assail him, impale him, with monster truck force

3
Shooby Doo, rock steady crew
Find him an octoped ingenue

4
I killed my dinner with karate
Kick ’em in the face, taste the body;
Shallow work is the work that I do.

5
Socrates and Milhous Nixon
Both went the same way—through the kitchen

6
I nuked another Grandma’s Apple Pie
and hung my head in shame

7
‘Cause this guy don’t dance
And word’s been passed, this is our last chance

8
He looks up from World War Two
Then you catch him catching you
…catching his eye.

9
They said you were hot stuff
And that’s what Baby’s been reduced to…

10
Everybody got their Black & Decker
Blood and fettucine everywhere

11
You can call me Aaron Burr
From the way I’m droppin Hamiltons

12
And you couldn’t see a city
On that marbled bowling ball
Or a forest or a highway
Or me here least of all

13
You can raise welts
Like nobody else

14
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I’ll take your hand
In the land that our grand-children knew

Multiple random plugs (get it? Hanh? HANH?):

One of my favorite This American Life segments: David Rakoff’s heartbreaking “Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace,” Act Three of Episode 389 – Frenemies. If you agree with me that TAL is one of the best shows ever on radio, consider a donation.

Had a surprisingly good time watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Probably helped to be sitting between two kids who were laughing at all the genuinely smart and/or bizarre gags. Way better movie than it needed to be to fill it’s demographic slot.

Whole family is enjoying Glee and rooting for it to get better already.

“Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” by Das Racist/Wallpaper. Find it. Listen to it. Hate me forever for making you do it.