Hello! Thank you for signing up to, or stumbling on, this no-news-newsletter written by me, Ashley Clark. If you do choose to subscribe—and it’s free—you’ll receive bulletins about whatever’s on my mind: usually some combination of art/film/music/literature/football. If that sounds good, hit the button!
Hello, and welcome back. This week’s quick rec is a wonderful short film, Anne, Richard & Paul (2018), directed by one of my favorite working artists, critics and filmmakers, London-based Morgan Quaintance.
I saw Anne, Richard & Paul for the first time recently at the Museum of Modern Art, which hosted an evening of numerous Quaintance films, with the director in person. It is an impressionistic and effervescent documentary portrait of East London’s Bow Gamelan Ensemble, the now defunct experimental group that comprised performance artist Anne Bean, sculptor Richard Wilson and musician Paul Burwell. (The trio, of whose existence I was previously unaware, struck me as a sort of Cafe OTO Rod, Jane and Freddy, but that says more about my childish sense of humor than it does about Anne, Richard or Paul.)
I found the film to be joyous and immersive, formally fascinating—among other things, Quaintance is a master at mixing film stocks and textures to evocative effect—and a galvanizing record of unbridled creativity. You can—and should!—watch it here on the Vimeo channel of Live Art Development Agency (LADA), who commissioned the film.
Last week, upon email receipt of my previous letter on Creed and the history of black boxers on film, a friend and subscriber, who shall remain nameless, reached out to tell me that, from the subject line alone, they had assumed the subject of the newsletter would be Floridian post-Grunge, sort of-Christian rockers Creed. Now, I don’t know what that says about my friend, me, or my friend’s perception of me, but it did make me chuckle, because I hadn’t thought about Creed for a long time.
If memory serves, the British public—unlike the American heartlands—didn't really go in for the sort of lugubrious, gravel-throated hammering purveyed by the likes of Creed; it was the exact kind of murderously self-serious dinosaur rock that sat in stark contrast to the subversive cheekiness of the British pop music to which I was in thrall (Pulp, Supergrass), and which would soon be washed away by the skinny jeans n’ ties neo-new wave upon which The Strokes surfed. But a cursory Google shows that Creed did indeed break the UK Top 20 twice with 2001’s fatherhood ballad “With Arms Wide Open” (which I remember) and the following year’s “My Sacrifice” (which I do not).
One Creed song that did not chart in the UK, but which has a special place in my heart, is 1997’s overwrought “My Own Prison”, in which singer Scott Stapp growls ominously about facing the consequences of his own actions:
Court is in session, a verdict is in
No appeal on the docket today just my own sin
The walls cold and pale, the cage made of steel
Screams fill the room, alone I drop and kneel
I have no idea when I first heard the song, but at some point it became the perfect private in-joke, between me, myself and I, to soundtrack the increasing hell I was experiencing as an overworked, underpaid, and increasingly exhausted and uninspired freelance writer—look, here’s me tweeting words to that effect back in 2017, months if not weeks before I gave up the freelance lifestyle for good.
I’ve listened to “My Own Prison” again this morning. I can’t say it has improved much to my ears over time, but between the bollock-popping effort of Stapp’s vocal delivery, and the grinding, industrial churn of the musical backing, it does build up a certain incantatory force. Moreover, a glance through the hundreds of YouTube comments under the song illustrates just how much its earnest message resonates with fans, many of whom credit “My Own Prison” with helping them through times of mental health crisis or family hardship. And really, when I think about it, perhaps no song ever has got as close to summing up the experience of having to file 500 words on A Haunted House 2:
Silence now the sound
My breath the only motion around
Demons cluttering around
My face showing no emotion
Shackled by my sentence
Expecting no return
Here there is no penance
My skin begins to burn
Before I go, I wanted to give a quick shout-out to the Austin Film Society cinema, who kindly hosted me a few weekends back. I introduced a screening of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, and signed copies of my book “Facing Blackness: Media and Minstrelsy in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled” afterwards. It’s a beautiful space, with an extremely engaged audience, and an exceptionally thoughtful curatorial team. Photographer Heather Leah Kennedy was on hand to take a few snaps, so here’s a small handful:
Until next week!
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I absolutely thought this was going to be about the movie Creed II. Imagine my surprise!
Creed is, indeed, terrible, but I appreciate now that they (and similar bands) helped pave the way for the mainstream popularity a lot of in my opinion GREAT emo bands of the early oughts like Jimmy Eat World, Brand New, Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Dashboard Confessional etc
sorry don't let my Americanness (read: southern California upbringing in this time) too much color this discussion... but yes where some folks went Strokes chic indifference with rock post Creed (and ilk), others doubled down lol