Ties that bind

His last opus had a three-word title. It was his first breakthrough and McKinley has a dazzling talent for expression. He diluted his work to three words and two emotions. He now chose only two words. The magic, that first part, is in the lyrics; the magic realist suburban sun-burnt spectacle of tarmac-burning joy of movement, both from and towards. It’s in the exuberant preaching of Dixon, in his flair for depicting urban landscapes and mindscapes, full of, first and foremost, life. There is warmness, feeling in these accounts, but the seeds are contained in the lush foliage of instruments that fit so well within the boundaries of Dixon’s imagination. His instrumentals always had this jazz fusion veneer, but have never been this well-recorded and so well intertwined with the poet’s words, so natural in their evolution. ...

Grea ca piatra de moară. Moștenirea, adică. Nu-i tocmai ușor să navighezi apele pe care în alte vremuri tu singur le cartografiaseși. Cum ieși din tipare? Mai are rost s-o faci, știind că tiparul a fost definit tocmai prin propriul refuz de a achiesa la vreun trend în afară de propriile pasiuni? Partizan e, după mine, singura trupă care poate sta perfect verticală ca impact dintre formațiile rock post-decembriste. Nu a pășit strâmb, nu s-a dezis o secundă de sine și de viziunea hipstărească pe cadrul căreia au construit un monolit cultural românesc. ...

Olga Tokarczuk’s “The Empusium” tackles being a woman by portraying the female experience in absentia. The female world is silent, visual. Their judgements are heeded, but never heard. They are the eyes that watch, the thorn in one’s side that can be ever debated about, yet never talked to. The subtitle is quite in your face. A health resort horror story. It betrays both genre and setting. Horror has always manifested through fear of the concealed other. The dark figure in the shadows, watching. The looming threat of violence, of death, of change. Horror starts out silent. It only shouts when the danger is close to being manifest. In Tokarczuk’s novel, the feminine is the horror. The males make a show out of talking about women. They are the ones who act, who impose their will and who construct the world as it is around them. They sit on the throne of creation, but what is to be done with these others? Ever-present, yet keeping their existance a mistery. ...