The cover artwork for the album features a man’s torso with apparent stream-of-consciousness-prose superimposed over it. The text reads:
dear CAT POWER sir i have heaviness with a dr. molkner sir it’s rabbit stew with you it’s you it’s you sir we’ve got the rabbit stew this time – and i’m in you i’m in you sir with a heavy line a very fine line indeed mr. wolfe it’s heavyAccording to Marshall, the text came from a letter given to her friend by a mentally ill elderly man who lived in the same hotel as she did:
“My friend Jennifer used to live in the hotel and there was this old man and I guess he was crazy and nobody wanted to say hello to him and she would always say hello to him and you know, kind of took a liking to him. One day, she saw him being taken away by the proverbial white coat, as one might say. He was really sad and reached into his pocket and gave her the note before they took him away. It was three rectangular pieces of paper taped together that were very dated, and the paper was very dated, disintegrating…”3Marshall said that she added in her band name, Cat Power, but the rest of the text was lifted entirely from the letter. "It said everything that was there. It may have been in Savannah, actually. It’s sort of in memory of him. Like, where is he now? If that was written to him, then does that mean that he was gay?
wow!
Well, I like Cat Power, so okay.
thank you :) its just so funny the things you learn in the sex industry street prostitute vs. stripper, i am so glad i got out of it… its funny cause we as strippers would always compete against eachother and i couldn’t even tell why http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_complex
haha i live in a nice home, got a a cool mac, watch cool t.v ( twin peaks only), shop at the goodwill, am annoying trendy hipister but sometimes i get so scared about sexual representation, and how people internalize T.V.
I had a film professor at the university I went to who said she became a professor because of Sans Soiel, and it changed my life in a lot of ways
I strongly strongly urge you to go to a stripclub and order a water, and think of how glamorized they are on that stage, and then think of the things they do after hours .. and then to think of the SEEDIEST bar you know and the stuff they have to go through
its so funny because i feel like a wise old fish ( sexual pun??) but i am only 19 i am going to dance again, but i i am kinda of scared cause of the stuff that happens there
So what STI did you catch if you don’t mind me asking? It’s a pretty big statement to say that you will never kiss anyone again at only 19. And you said you’re glad you got out of the stripping business but you’re gonna strip again soon? I don’t understand.
Off-est topic yet.
As Richard Ellman wrote of Yeats, “if we must suffer, it is better to create the world in which we suffer, and this is what heroes do spontaneously, artists do consciously, and all men do in their degree.”
hey she does mention Born into Brothels and “Sans Soiel”.
Yes, off-topic topic for sure.
no i will never dance again, i learned my lesson…risselada is right, unfortunately there is this horrible catch-22 out there , and that is what i love about cinema and music the things you learn, i hate when crime is glamorized in films, i think tarantino did a really good thing with violence or tried too… Death Proof was my favorite .. I guess what i want to do with my life now is go to school soon and write good essays study really hard learn more
@ Matt Parks that is a great quote… it is true we must use cinemas escapism.. learning it is the real world is WAY to hard for me.
All the world’s a stage,And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Sweet Will by Philip Levine
The man who stood beside me
34 years ago this night fell
on to the concrete, oily floor
of Detroit Transmission, and we
stepped carefully over him until
he wakened and went back to his press.
It was Friday night, and the others
told me that every Friday he drank
more than he could hold and fell
and he wasn’t any dumber for it
so just let him get up at his
own sweet will or he’ll hit you.
“At his own sweet will,” was just
what the old black man said to me,
and he smiled the smile of one
who is still surprised that dawn
graying the cracked and broken windows
could start us all to singing in the cold.
Stash rose and wiped the back of his head
with a crumpled handkerchief and looked
at his own blood as though it were
dirt and puzzled as to how
it got there and then wiped the ends
of his fingers carefully one at a time
the way the mother wipes the fingers
of a sleeping child, and climbed back
on his wooden soda-pop case to
his punch press and hollered at all
of us over the oceanic roar of work,
addressing us by our names and nations—
“Nigger, Kike, Hunky, River Rat,”
but he gave it a tune, an old tune,
like “America the Beautiful.” And he danced
a little two-step and smiled showing
the four stained teeth left in the front
and took another suck of cherry brandy.
In truth it was no longer Friday,
for night had turned to day as it
often does for those who are patient,
so it was Saturday in the year of ’48
in the very heart of the city of man
where your Cadillac cars get manufactured.
In truth all those people are dead,
they have gone up to heaven singing
“Time on My Hands” or “Begin the Beguine,”
and the Cadillacs have all gone back
to earth, and nothing that we made
that night is worth more than me.
And in truth I’m not worth a thing
what with my feet and my two bad eyes
and my one long nose and my breath
of old lies and my sad tales of men
who let the earth break them back,
each one, to dirty blood or bloody dirt.
Not worth a thing! Just like it was said
at my magic birth when the stars
collided and fire fell from great space
into great space, and people rose one
by one from cold beds to tend a world
that runs on and on at its own sweet will.
oh p.s i am sorry mubi for not posting in the right area.. need to learn the rules first
can I get ur Phone # ???
What is going on here? These posts sound like the Colonel Kurtz recordings from Apocalypse Now. This is truly terrifying stuff. Are we in the black lodge?
“The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with twice the speed of our upward progress; and Kurtz’s life was running swiftly, too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time. . . . I saw the time approaching when I would be left alone of the party of ‘unsound method.’”
there’s a brown current in haven’s pants
lol!
Emma
i don’t know how to say this in a more serious way, but i did a lot of stupid things when i was younger. i loved cinema and i had my own issues and i used it as a method of escapism, but what movie i never really really listened to was KIDS and that was the story of stis and what gets scarier is that we can catch stuff only by kiss, and i honestly didn’t realize this because i had mental health problems myself and i got completely othered by the medical field… it is so so so scary and i can’t joke about it anymore ….i feel like the worlds biggest idiot, but it is so true. drugs are the stupidest thing you can do !!!!! honestly i can’t joke about it … it really needs to be talked about in a better way, and we as a film community need to come together and think of ways people can brainstorm together…i passed my own judgment on to this women at a bar i was at… if you have an exposed wound in your mouth ( if you are a smoker) ect ect or just a cut you can catch stis that way, and it is so so so scary.. i will never kiss a person again because i want to be so brutally honest about what i am going through right now .. i am so thankful for the rest of my life that i have to live. and the thing is i never even prostituted myself at those bars, i took a sip from their glass of water and i didnt even realize that you could catch things that way
if you are a humanist and you can remember some of the best moments that you have had with people, than you can imagine what it’s like to know that you can never do that again. that amazing feeling of what it is like to have sex with someone you love with no condom, or that best erotic tingle becomes completely destroyed . and you live a life of solitude… for me someone who loves cinema i think of some of the best laughs i have had with the wittiest of people, the songs that i loved the most, or the people that i thought were the prettiest and the funniest and consequently just wanted to kiss, and i think of how that will all be gone for me…. and it was the worst feeling i have ever had in my life and it was also the best
but i will not sit here and feel bad for myself, i will get up and do something about it.. it is so so so important that people get checked out and it is so so so important that people understand the best moments of your life are the ones you have sober .. to be nice to everyone you know
i remember when i couldn’t sleep at night and i thought of all the sexual abuse i had experienced, and i thought about what it would be like to be born into brothels and it would be so horrible, way worse off than me sitting here at a computer writing about it , because the worst voice is silence-st ( as claire denis has pointed out)