nowave: on broken literature

so I've been doing a lot of reading and listening



i've been riding a nowave. meanwhile i've been reading:



I consider Soupault's book to be a piece of broken literature. the plot is absurdly simple. the narrator, who is not named or described (the reader is left to wonder if he even exists except as witness), encounters a prostitute named Georgette and follows her to the scene of a crime. He comes to know the characters involved in the crime through following her as she takes the same route through Paris every night. His fascination with her leads him to engage with her brother and the underground group of pimps and thieves that surround her.

The narrator makes equal mention both of the situation that surrounds him immediately and the impression it forms in his mind. The city becomes a character of its own as it assumes the same dual nature as Georgette herself. As day approaches Georgette's appearance changes and she becomes an everyday woman: she buys groceries and lives with her brother who paints. Soupault finds her split personality uncanny. Perhaps because it reveals his own manifold nature.



Last Nights in Paris is about the fleet and transitory nature of identity. Georgette is who she is by virtue of the men who control her movements and the city that surrounds her.

I felt she was not the same since I had learned that she could be Georgette of the day and Georgette of the night, that two women, as different from each other as darkness and light, dwelt in that pale and supple body, that shadow dressed in black. She seemed to attract mystery as water attracts the light. About her danced I know not what cold and inviting flame. Georgette possessed the charm of the invisible. (Soupault, 82)

I am reminded when reading this book that we are by the people around us, by the city we wake up in, and by chance. Each of these forces confront the narrator at different points as he finds his life consumed in understanding the mystery of Georgette. What the reader comes to understand is that the mystery is that there is no mystery. Georgette is a whore, the witnessed scene is a witnessed scene, and chance can be cruel to those who look for significance. See here too the upside-down noir of Gombrowicz's Cosmos or the strange play of time in Schulz's Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass.



The Enlightenment believed in and reinforced the belief in a unified self. This is reflected in the European novel. In Soupault's Dada novel, identify unravels and is seen as contingent and accidental.

Music, too, is shifting from concepts of harmony, cohesion, and song structure. It is breaking apart. This is not only seen in the proliferation of independent music but also in the music itself. Nowave represents a conscious disavowal of the production techniques and perfectionism in modern sound. It represents, for me, the same direction and motivations that surround Soupault's fine book.



From killshaman.com, Night Control's record label:

“Life Control” sees Night Control venturing further into the dark depths of sonic experimentation and ambience, circling back around to Derrida’s deconstruction theory and applying it to pop music. Sounds are manipulated, affected and tortured into loosely structured pop gems covered in organic acoustic guitars, blown out guitars and some of the most interested mixes of live and programmed drums.

-low-