Aural Wes recently posted about the 1999 film Instrument by Wesleyan alum Jem Cohen ’84. I’ve had the soundtrack for years thanks to my much-cooler-than-me wife, and enjoyed it immensely. Except that I didn’t know that there was a film. There are three words on the album cover: Fugazi, Instrument, and Soundtrack… No? Nothing? I suppose I thought that “Instrument Soundtrack” had some kind of inside meaning. This is why I like psychoanalysis so much—an underdeveloped sense of the literal. Now I know. Netflixed it to the top, bumping out Blackadder, at least for now.

Update: I enjoyed this movie so much. Fugazi appear to walk the thinnest line between standing for something and not taking themselves too seriously. We listened to punk all weekend on the stereo after watching Instrument, and every time a Fugazi track came on it was so clear how far above the rest of the pack they stand.

The film is shot in a raw, understated style (on Super-8 film), without exposition. It chronicles ten years in the band’s history, 1987–1998. Occasional lines from Fugazi’s songs, printed on screen at the beginning of some scenes, are the only didactic narrative gestures from Cohen. Ultimately it’s a document of the band, written by someone who knows and loves them.

And here is your money quote. It’s Ian MacKaye talking between songs to an audience member who was being aggressive:

I saw you two guys earlier at the Good Humor truck, and you were eating your ice cream like little boys, and I thought, ‘Those guys aren’t so tough! They’re eating ice cream, what a bunch of swell guys.’ Oh don’t you deny it, you were eating an icecream cone. You were eating an icecream cone. Oh you’re bad now, you’re bad now, but you were eating an icecream cone, and I saw you. That’s the shit you can’t hide. You eat iceceam. Everybody knows it. The whole place knows it. Icecream eating motherfucker. That’s what you are.

Watch it.

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• Appleseed: Ex Machina

As we plunge further into crises, of economics, democracy, environment and war, and the future appears less and less about infinite progress, I’m increasingly struck by the ways that we used to imagine the world of today would actually turn out.

View from the Twentieth Century

Take Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, page through some science textbooks from the 1950s, walk the passenger tunnels at Union Station in New Haven (pictured here), circle Eero Saarinen’s Ezra Stiles and Morse Colleges, or Paul Rudolph’s brutalist Art and Architecture building on Yale campus, explore Wesleyan’s CFA complex in Middletown, or stroll past the entrance to this hotel on St. Kilda Road in Melbourne.

We used to project where we were headed with Modernity in the way we built the city environment. There’s a dream of a better future, on a different scale, that seeps in as you spend time with these objects, images and places. There is a sense of optimism and the hope of a more cooperative sociality. I’m not sure that we do this anymore.

Entering the station building

A different future

In these ways we used to be more modern. In other ways, it was always a dream, an aspiration that was never achieved. Was it supposed to be? Maybe not. Looking ahead one thing seems certain: the Twentieth Century’s imaginings of Tomorrow will never come to pass, and the future is going to turn out to be a lot different than anyone predicted.

On the other hand, I don’t know from architecture. Never studied it. Of course, when has such a limitation ever prevented me from expressing a strong opinion? Perhaps you disagree…

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• Ginza in the rain
• Ramifications
• Machine, rail and tree

First up we have a machine that might be used in the tearing down and/or building up of bridges, or perhaps in the installation and/or removal of telegraph poles—both are happening right now, and yes, our neighbourhood is a hotbed of activity, you had better believe.

The tracks

Next is a shot of the railway line taken by holding the camera high above my head to get above the fence that doesn’t look like it would save you if you leaned on it but nevertheless usually supplies the necessary psychological reassurance that one will probably get to the other side safely, at least this one time.

My favourite tree on campus

And finally we have a shot of what is probably most accurately described as my favourite tree/built environment combination on campus, some kind of oaky, elmy thing nestled amidst the brutalist CFA structures I walk between every day that remind me of QPAC which in turn is strangely comforting.

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• Obligatory fall post
• Next stop: modernity
• Instrument

For your enjoyment, and because Mum asked me to, I present some photos of the fall colours on campus this year.

For those who don’t work at Wesleyan or live in Middletown this shot is taken on Foss Hill, which is kind of the spiritual hub of the university. This is where key events at WesFest, Spring Fling, the zombies game, Feet to the Fire, and soon WesWars (and probably a million other things I’m forgetting) take place. It’s also where the residents of Middletown come with their sleds and their rug rats when it snows good and hard. When I make coffee in the morning I can see the hill from the big window at the end of the hall, with Van Vleck Observatory peeking out of the foliage; it was especially beautiful this morning, though they really need to paint the roof again.^†

If you click through to the gallery you’ll see a few of the shots of Middletown that I took this afternoon from the roof of the Allbritton Center, which used to go by the name “Davenport.” This part of the river valley used to be called Mattabeseck and the surrounding country was called Quinnehtukqut. These names I like. If you’re a fan of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy you’ll know what I mean. “Middletown?” well, okay. “Mattabeseck” — there’s power in the old names of things.

† I brought my camera in today to take more photos but the battery died on me after about six clicks. Since this is the second battery and the camera is about seven years old it might soon, finally, be time for me to move on and get something better. And yes, for regular readers of Zero to One-Eighty this aside was for LydiaT.

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• American metal

Update: it was 417 new messages.

Make the freshman year credit-fail. This one’s tricky, but stay with me. There are roughly 800 first year students at Zenith: multiply by four courses and two semesters, that’s 6,400 final grades given in the first year alone. Then multiply by the roughly 4 grades pieces of work given in each course, that 25,600 grades that have to be decided! And since at least 20% of those grades will be below the grade of A-, that’s at least 5,120 incidents of upset students, at least half of whom (2,560) will want to see their professors for at least 15 minutes per incident to explain that they have never received such a grade before. Now you see where I’m going, don’t you? Think how much better it would be for the students not to stress out about grades their first year, and how much better for we, the faculty people not to have those stupid conversations about grades and spend our time teaching instead.

The money cataclysm inspiring more creative prioritisation.