There are so many reasons why this is better than a conventional memoir. This book is really good. Like overwhelmingly good. Jay-Z’s prose feels like a really intelligent, easy, affecting conversation. That is most incredible about the book is his respect. He writes with such tremendous respect for the readers, his influences, his friends, his generation, and culture and that makes it really easy and captivating. I love his music but there’s no way I could ever grasp all the layers of meaning. To that end, the footnotes are great. They’re appropriately explanatory without sounding patronizing or condescending — the pervasive tone of the book.

Throughout the book he talks about his influences. That, for me, is really wonderful. Hearing people talk about things they love is such a great pleasure. One of my favorite parts of his Fresh Air interview is when they discuss his sampling of a song from Annie. It’s funny to hear a rapper and big-time mogul talk about a broadway musical, especially the only one to which I feel connected (on account of the redhead thing). The book is filled with references to artists and works I have never heard of and ones I have, always speaking from a place of respect.

My love of this book does not end. Not only is the prose stellar and illuminating but is also perfectly visual. In the hands of someone else (I am referring to Jay-Z as the art director, and the team of artists and designers who worked on it) this could have turned out like a collage, but here it’s done with near-perfect execution and great style. In fact I would place it more in league with artists’ books because of how effectively the medium of the book is used. Often in memoirs pictures serve a purely expository purpose. In Decoded, the images, which are certainly not limited to photographs, are integral and are part of the structure and purpose of the book. It is meant to be a different kind of experience. There are the written and visual components but since it’s about music, about rhymes and lyrics, the prose is aural as well. It is so different and so stunning compared to a conventional memoir, and an astonishing success.

I think it’s really perfect that I read this as/after I read The Pun Also Rises by John Pollack. There is so much really elegant wordplay, but the nonlinear structure reflects a lot of the connections made when developing those linguistic connections. Before I started, I had read and heard reviews talking about how the book is part memoir and part explanation of his lyrics. From that I was picturing a linear memoir and lyrical explanation. The book jumps around between time periods and there is no timeline. He’ll talk about his childhood and then a story from when he was CEO of Def Jam — it’s not about the sequence of events, it’s about similarities in what actually happened and how that shaped his life and music. That constant movement, between times, between meanings of words, between ideas, is what keeps his music and this book interesting.

One last thought that was so very perfect for me, an obsessive pop culture lover. There is a section where he talks about the 2008 Glastonbury Music Festival controversy, addressing it in a wonderful, modern, pup-culture-loving way. He says, “But kids today have a mix of songs from all over the place on their iPods, and they take pride in it. There is no rock music with walls around it. It’s one of the great shifts that’s happened over my lifetime, popular culture has managed to shake free of the constraints that still limit us in so many other parts of life. It’s an open field.”

Highly Recommended.

The station plays music spanning tons of genres: songs and ballads from the British Isles, calypso (my new favorite), American folk music, gospel, and native music from the Americas, Asia (including some great throat singing!), and Africa.  The music is instrumental, vocal, a capella, bands, field recordings, percussion, etc.  It covers so much ground!  This isn’t exactly surprising as Smithsonian Folkways recordings have been popular among ethnomusicologists for ages.

My favorite new discovery is Lord Invader, whose song “Crisis in Alabama” is really a treat:

Once more with feeling: the Smithsonian Folkways radio station – www.folkways.si.edu/radio/player.html!

Aimee Fleck, a fantastic student at the Maryland Instutute College of Art, made a little zine called The Fat Femme’s Guide to Loving Summer.  Inside there are interviews with some really foxy ladies, instructions on how to make friendship bracelets, a recipe for beignets, new hairstyles to try, a playlist, and lots of suggestions for great summer fashion. It’s all beautifully, colorfully drawn and very well designed, plus sassy and fun.  The zine is also getting plenty of tumblr love, which makes me really happy.

You can view it for free (here) or for a mere $6 you can own your very own copy (order here).  You’ll not only be supporting a young artist but also a fat-acceptance advocate!

Some facts about the Forevertron:

• It’s the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world, certified by the Guinness book of world records. [Update: I think it was usurped in 2001 by a stupid sculpture of stupid geese ]
• It was built by Tom Every as the character Dr. Evermor — a Victorian scientist who sought to launch himself “into the heavens on a magnetic lightning force beam.”
• It is the coolest place I have ever been in my life.

I cannot stress enough how this place is the coolest place I have ever been in my life.  Every single piece of the sculpture is precious and exceptional.  Much of the scrap metal used to create the sculpture is very old and very decorative, and it is all combined beautifully to create something far greater than my imagination could fathom.  I am and have always been a huge fan of roadside attractions, folk art, and odd museums, especially in Wisconsin.  There is something really special about roadside attractions that I can’t quite put my finger on.  The whole place blends history and art, machinery and fantasy , and you find yourself immersed in that world.  This place is special.  I find it funny to me is that at first glance it looks almost steampunk.  What’s funny is that it’s not so much steampunk as it is just steam.

It comes down to this: I want to live there.  My experience there reminded me of that scene in Harriet the Spy where they visit Golly’s friend Mrs. W. who has a garden full of junk creations.  There’s a mobile of glass soda bottles (with soda in them), instruments made out of old kitchen stuff, sculptures made out of old instruments, all kinds of fun things for Harriet, Sport, and Janie to explore.  The Forevertron is a real life, genuine version of that.  You could explore for ages and still only know a small part of the place.  I want to live somewhere like that!  It might be my own creation or someone else’s, but I ache to live someplace where there is wonder and excitement and creativity and lots of stuff.  So if anyone wants to build me a giant machine, give me a holler! 

If you want to know more about this amazing place, I highly suggest reading the article from the Folk Art Messenger but mostly I suggest visiting it yourself.

Dr. Evermor’s Forevertron [Folk Art Messenger]
An Interview with Tom Every (Doc Evermor) [The Bottlecap]
The Forevertron [Roadside America]
The Forevertron [PBS' Off the Road]
The Forevertron [Wikipedia]
The aforementioned clip from Harriet the Spy [On youtube]

Again, Again series by Joey Fleming; the rest of the exhibit in the background

Emma has a true gift with words (she even won the Huntington Poetry Prize at Carleton), and combines poetry and visual interest in such a way that could be overpowering would that the phrases weren’t so perfect.  My mother “didn’t get” the collected cigarette butts, but I think that’s maybe because she was trying to read more into it.  Knowing Emma, I don’t see some post-modern, post-everything piece about health and smoking or any of that art school too-overt stuff.  I mean, maybe it was, but like the titles say they’re For Tony not for you.  I see them as collections, arranged beautifully and masterfully inside precious fixed spaces.  The other piece of hers in the show was For Starters, a poem in the form of a list, in the form of silk screened words, arranged on blocks on the wall.  The phrases are at once delicate and commanding, filled with the nuance of experience and inexperience.  Some of my favorite phrases (which were extremely difficult to narrow down because I love every single word):

I want to be the kind of woman who you can just tell that she’s serious about her future.

I want to be in a railroad town in 1903, and I want that railroad town to be Las Vegas, Nevada.

I want to be in Texas in the early 90’s and I want to be raising children there, in Texas in the early 90’s.

I want music in my head all day long.

I want to love my body.

I want to hug people casually, without feeling uncomfortable.

I want to be hugged.

I want to be the kind of woman who accepts that she will be misunderstood, who maybe sometimes even wants that.

I want to believe that aging isn’t so bad.

I want to age gracefully.

I don’t want to age.

My mother saw the show before I did and she loved Kristina’s maps.  It’s hard for me to imagine works that could be better suited to my mother’s interests.

1. She is extremely forgetful, so the houses Kristina created would be perfect for her.
2. She works at the Department of City Development, so she deals with houses and maps and plans all the time.  She also used to be an appraiser and has an enormous appreciation for new and historical architecture alike.

It’s sort of like Kristina’s drawings were made for her.  Besides my mother’s endless admiration, her work is very thoughtful and combines her interests in a way that isn’t just interesting to her.  I too loved the house plans, but, being a print girl, her pieces Boden I, II, and III were beautiful and fascinating.  Color intaglio is difficult and weird, but she is the kind of woman who loves a clean print so I can really see her embracing the challenge.  The prints were subtle and intricate and layered and I think I could stare at them for hours without losing interest.  Emma and Kristina are two tremendously talented women and I am so pleased I got to see what they have been working on since our senior show.

The show also features the work of the St. Olaf fifth-year interns, Molly Baeverstad, Joey Fleming, Erica Naylor, Dylan Nelson, and Trygve Wastvedt.  I find that I never really come away from a group show being impressed with everyone, so I’m going to talk about he artists I really loved, Baeverstad, Fleming, and, to a lesser extent, Naylor.

Molly Baeverstad did a series of color monoprints, each with delightfully strange names that were almost close to words I recognized (so I really apologize if I wrote some down wrong) [Update: I figured out how I recognized some of them].  I love how the prints turned out, but I really want to ask her about her process.  How many layers, what kind of ink, what kind of plates.  The designs were abstract, colorful, layered, delicate.  Mostly I just wanted to talk to her more about them.  I loved them, but I’m confident I would love them more if I had more information.

Joey Fleming’s work was really a treat.  There was a wide range of material that it was hard not to be interested.  I liked the work he did with text, mostly I loved how beautifully the text was rendered onto the clay and the interaction with the glaze, but the text itself was sort of hit or miss.  I’m generally not a fan of spreading text out over a bunch of pots, but it’s usually at least a little interesting.  What really interested me about Fleming’s work was the faceted vases and cups.  Those pieces had such grace and motion without being “perfect” in the classic porcelain sense.  The glaze worked with the forms, giving a great variation of surface and color.  I am a huge fan of purposeful imperfection in clay.  Imperfection can often mean badly thrown, heavy, and accidentally glazed well.  Fleming’s pieces were imperfect, but in the beautiful, effortless way that comes from hard work, trial and error, talent and luck.  There was also a huge volume of his work in the show, which to me indicates so much hard work because for every piece you include there are probably two or three you left out.

There are more comments about specific pieces in the photo gallery, so I encourage clicking around to see and read more.  Unfortunately, you missed your shot to see Again, Again at the Northfield Arts Guild if you’re reading this now.  It was a really excellent show, and I am really pleased I got to see it when I visited.

You can buy your own Postcup  from the really lovely site Bailey Doesn’t Bark.

I’ve started to envision a PBS gardening show based on these little adventures.  I know there’s a show called “the Victory Garden.”  I’ve never seen it but I know it’s there. On PBS.  And it has something to do with gardens.  My show would immediately follow it and be called “Victory Over the Garden” wherein I would do extreme pruning, invasive plant eviction, and pest kick-assery.  I would administer my own brand of swift garden justice.  To the garden victor go the garden spoils.  The more I think about this, the more I feel and sound like a garden tyrant.  I sound like an Ivan the Terrible, but I swear I’m more of a Catherine the Great.

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”
-Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste), 1825

In addition to being April Fool’s day, today is also Edible Book Day.  Started in 1999 and occurring on the birthday of notable French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, bibliophiles and book-binders worldwide have been making tasty literary treats.  There’s only one rule, that the edible creation has something to do with books.  This could be a literal book bound from edible materials, or other edible creations inspired by books.  The latter category includes a lot of puns and plays on words (for instance Hamelt, Goodnight Moon Pie,  or the Scarlet Pumpernickel).

Celebrate April 1 by making an edible book, or check out the flickr stream for last year’s festival at Duke University are here, and a worldwide index of photos here.  Warning: Looking at these edible books might make you quite hungry!

You can download the stationery template here!