The Depressing Truth

No matter the time period, one thing that you can always be sure of is the growing disparity between the wealthy and poor. Diego Rivera’s mural, Frozen Assets and The Occupy Movement share a lot of similarities. Frozen Assets is composed of three distinct juxtaposed parts. At the top is the easily recognizable skyline of New York but the colors and overall atmosphere is bleak and dystopian. Moreover, numerous cranes are visible but construction seems to have halted. Countless people, who look more like nondescript shadows are crowded into a station platform. This theme continues on down, as a steel shelter makes up the middle piece of the mural. Several men, faceless and equally nondescript, resemble corpses as they sleep in mass with an ominous looking figure standing as guard.

Even today, Frozen Assets is a metaphor to the events of present day with the Occupy Movement. In the mural, the people are dwarfed by the very thing they helped create, since most the labor in industry comes from the masses but progress can’t continue without the workers, hence the “frozen” construction. This is similar to the We Are The 99% basis of the Occupy Movement, since they also make up the vast majority compared to the 1% of the wealthy and are the main cog in how society functions.

The shelter in the middle piece resembles the “shantytowns” during the Great Depression and the Occupy Movement correlates to this with the tents they set up in protest. The recent violence is akin to the Bonus Army Conflict of 1932, albeit on a smaller scale. The comparisons with the mural, Frozen Assets from 80 years ago and the present day Occupy Movement is quite telling in how society still has an ever growing gap between the rich and poor.

Soul-uplifting and Body-destroying

When something is "soul-uplifting and body-destroying", what do you interpret that as? This description is a perfect summation of my experience from seeing the band, Swans back in early March.

Now, I haven't been to many gigs but after seeing another live performance from a band that are legends in their own right back in mid January, I had the feeling that it wouldn't be topped. How wrong I was.

My inspiration comes on the rainy night of March 1^st, at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco. It started out rather unspectacular, to be honest. There is always support before the headliner. Personally, I feel sorry for them because I sure wouldn't want to be the lead in for this band. After about some 30 odd minutes, they finished up and we waited. Some people I talked to who had seen Swans before their deformation were rife with anticipation and surprisingly, a bit fearful. 

Where was the band? A loud drone filled the air and the lights above circled hypnotically. This continuous drone continued to build and grow louder for about 20 minutes. Finally, a band member came out and added to the drone, it was a deep and piercing note from a steel pedal guitar. It continued like that for some time until another appeared and started playing tubular bells. A guitar came into the mix, followed by pounding drums and a thunderous bass that vibrated the ballroom. The incomparable Michael Gira then took center stage and seemed to be in a swaying trance as he began to play.  

With a massive stomp of his foot, the sound was complete. This man is in his mid fifties but displayed an intensity that no one could predict. Men half his age couldn't hope to muster this kind of control over the audience. The music was so vibratory and loud that earplugs were practically irreverent and it stayed that way for over 2 hours.

What can I say? What's my inspiration? It was life changing. Something I'll never forget.

We were a worm on the anvil and Swans was the sledgehammer.