i created a music video w/ gidgetsparks
- tao lin
- about
- tumblr
- muumuu house
- news
- ['news feed' has closed]
- / older news
- books
- richard yates (2010)
-
- shoplifting from american apparel (2009)
- cognitive-behavioral therapy (2008)
- eeeee eee eeee (2007)
- bed (2007)
- you are a little bit happier than i am (2006)
- 'e-books'
- hikikomori with ellen kennedy (2007)
- today the sky is blue and white with bright blue spots and a small pale moon and i will destroy our relationship today (2006)
- this emotion was a little e-book (2006)
- selected 'pieces'
- 'relationship story'
- essay re 'future of the novel'
- essay re mushrooms
- essay re koko
- essay re 'almost transparent blue'
- top 10 worst fruits re blowjobs
- top 10 animals w/o asses
- profile re 'tao lin'
- essay re 'sfaa'
- essay re [various things]
- essay re trespassing
- essay re 'blogging platforms'
- essay re 'three movies i liked
- essay re 'marina abramovic'
- essay re 'honored guest'
- essay re 'sfaa'/music
- essay re seattle
- essay re 'reading in seattle'
- essay re 'levels of greatness'
- essay re 'good and bad in art'
- essay re poems/relationships
- essay re [the word 'nice']
- essay re germany
- essay re 'k-mart realism'
- essay re 'thomas bernhard'
- essay re 'short stories'
- 'we will drink our coffee...'
- the 'can't concentrate' manatee
- the nearly-severely depressed bird
- the existentially-fucked megamouth shark
- the professional sasquatch
- the gay stepdad
- the disappointed ant
- the vegan muffin
- sex story
- exactly what i want
- love is a thing on sale
- leftover crack in red hook
- sasquatch
- we will drink our coffee
- should
- bear poem
- february
- october
- friday
- whale poem
- opposite of song of myself
- interviews
- jeff rosenstock
- stza crack
- ben lerner
- malcolm gladwell
- tony o'neill
- chelsey minnis
- michael earl craig
- richard grayson
- deb olin unferth (2)
- matthew rohrer
- rebecca curtis
- clancy martin
- joy williams
- stephen elliott
- stephen dixon
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63 Comments:
Tell that hot lil bitch to show some skin.
bro...
i wish there were more cats in this video
maybe cats climbing on her naked body or something
"would be less boring or something" 'lol'
bro...
just want to have sex now
I really like the cat's neck kerchief. and that we finally get to see her face. (the woman, not the cat, although the cat's face is cute too).
that looks just like my cat Sammy - and now I just need to give him the red scarf to wear. red tshirt cape looked dashing, but a "Running of the Bulls" red scarf would really accentuate his ferocity. I have to merely dress him up now and film it. The house cat that does not climb trees will always be comforting. Is that the point of all this?
the cats would say "meow, meow, meow"
subtitles would read: 'trying to climb this naked girl'
I like the cats. I really like that cats. I like the song, too. It has the unique property that, no matter how much I raise the volume on my computer, it never seems to get any louder.
I would like to hear the original audio for this footage. I imagine Tao Lin saying things like "Climb the ladder" and "Climb over the wall" and "Now come back" in a totally neutral tone. I think that would be interesting to hear.
sounds like ke$ha
Cat montage seems genuine, as if the cats are not trying to "be" anything in particular.
I found the motivational and somewhat assertive "climbin' this shit" title to be undercut by the softer vocals and acoustics. But it was more just like "cool, they're not trying to be all agressive and macho" in their assertions that they can climb things.
h8 cats
i feel certain that the cats are trying to 'be' something
my cat has a facebook. kind of wish she also had a 'blogspot account' so that she could comment on this. seems relevant to her.
feel like she'd say something like 'meow'. possibly not, since i feel that the sound cats make generally does not seem like 'meow.'
since it really is me typing for her (cats cannot actually type) maybe i'd have her write 'eaaorw.' think that sounds most like her.
kind of wish this were facebook so that i could 'log in' as my cat and she could 'like' this post.
have your cat 'fb' me or nina
your cat comment on our walls, this video is posted on our walls
looking forward to being 'fb'd' by your cat
reminds me of john cheever's short story "the swimmer"
good stuff!
seems sweet, bros
my cat frank doesn't have facebook and is feeling a little left out.
i thought 'good'
damn, sweet
can't seem to find your 'fb' due to high volume of 'tao lin' results. maybe you could friend zelda, her name is 'zelda alexander.' doubt there are too many 'zelda alexanders' using facebook.
feel like she would be glad to accept, due to having appeared on your tumblr sitting beside a copy of SFAA, a photo that appears among her 'profile pics.'
my cat hates getting jizz on his back
I thought it was going to be bad. Feeling multilateral cynicism at the moment. But it was good. It has a softer-kinder-gentler Boards of Canada type-sound. Me likey.
Although . . . I hope making this was . . . like . . . free. Otherwise, bro-man-dude, Kacper Jarecki needs it.
this has too many comments wtf...
zelda is a little bit unhappy about the link, as gidget is the name of my best friend's dog who makes her mad jealous.
feel like it brought up some 'trauma' for her. damn.
try to hold the camera still next time. trust me on this, i went to film school.
Hmm. T-Lin, this made think of your essay about a Kmart manager next to a pinecone. Specifically, how you think about art while in the shower trying to suppress shit-talking. I do the same thing. And I think I’m going to be in the shower later trying to suppress shit-talking about this video. But I too recognize the arbitrariness of a subjective delineation between ‘art’ and not-‘art’. (Note that those aren’t T-Lin-style quotation marks, those are my own honest-to-goodness non-smarmy quotation marks.) And so I can’t help but think maybe I connect with you less now and we’re not on the same level of self-awareness, so we can’t really contribute as much to each other’s lives as I thought before I saw this video. But perhaps this whole comment is sarcastic in the same vein as your video, so I guess you don’t really know…
@anonymous#1 can you elaborate, i feel interested in reading more about your perceptions of my 'level of awareness' after watching this video
By the way, do you think in your writing that you use your unique stylistic manner as a crutch because you’re afraid to clearly and unequivocally say what you think? I’m not asking that to be supercilious. I’m honestly curious. Perhaps you don’t realize it. Do you consider your style a gimmick, is it a perceived need to adopt a signature that sets you apart, or is it true to your intention as a poet and writer? Is it possible not to have a gimmick?
@anonymous#1 (1) i have a certain style in each of my books, if you have read 'bed' and 'sfaa' you know i don't have one prose style, i feel that i have something like 5-8 prose styles that are, in my organization of it, distinct (2) i don't feel that any of those styles are 'unique,' except in the manner that everything is literally unique, i can cite who i 'copied' for whatever tic or technique in whatever style i use (3) for most of my writing, i think, i have wanted to to express clearly what i think rather than something else or to express it indirectly or metaphorically (4) what books of mine have you read, i don't think you've read any or you've read maybe 'sfaa' only
I should say that you remind me of Ludwig Wittgenstein, so I’m not sure your style is a crutch, there’s just perhaps no way to communicate—from inside the closed-system of human language—certain concepts, and maybe you’re approaching the cusp of what can be said. WTF am I talking about?
Hmm, I have to think more about my first comment and get back to you.
I haven’t read ‘Shoplifting from American Apparel’, but I’ve read ‘You Are a Little Bit Happier Than I Am’ and ‘Bed’ and ‘Eeeee Eee Eeee’ and many of your various interviews and articles. I don’t think you do have multiple prose styles. Well, perhaps you do, but I didn’t study English so I don’t really know. To me it feels as though you have one style, though, whether or not it’s the same ‘prose style’ (whatever ‘prose style’ means). I’ll have to think more about why I think that.
damn almost a shitstorm. felt some sprinkles of shit, that's all. felt good. anony bro was like 'i swear this isn't shit' and tao bro said 'this is shit' and anony bro said 'no its not shit. level of self-awareness bro' and tao said 'this is shit i am sensitive to shit right now because i have a lot of shit to do and i've been caught in something that could become a shitstorm. kombucha.'
daaaaamn
bros...
T-Lin, we're not arguing. I think that I think you're awesome otherwise I wouldn't be commenting here. I’m asking because I want to understand your work and/or you. If it makes you feel better you can outsource some small part of your giant haze of tasks to me. Also, I'm not anonymous, I'm Anonymous #1. As De Saussure would say, there's a difference between the sign and the signified. Need to consider your responses further…
alright
The kitten pictures didn't work.
The girl climbing things and music in the background worked.
www.myspace.com/henry2cool4school
╫ε∩r¥
hi tao, i really like the cover of 'richard yates'
jillian
I want to put a kaffiyeh on a cat, walk around with cat, and ignore everyone.
Tao, don't you hate cats?
Is the cat in this video the enemy?
i crush hard on that girl
glad to see no naggles up in this peace
wonder where the blacks have gone
naggles...
lol re 'T-Lin'
cute video
cute song
cute girl
cute cat
@Erik Stinson: T-Lin is Tao Lin’s pimp name. He answers to it exclusively.
@Tao Lin: I thought more about your question, but I don’t have a good answer. My perception of your ‘level of awareness’ comes mostly from reading your books, your blog, and seeing your art and photos. In fact, my level of awareness of you comes predominantly from the brilliant write-up and series of photos of you modeling I Am Carles. I posted my remark because after I watched your video I felt that I had misevaluated all those things, being—as I was—a new ‘me’ (again, not your quotes), so to speak: a me who exists in the context of having now seen your video. You cannot step twice into the same river, and so seeing your video made me a different person than that who I was before I saw your video, and the new person I became had to re-evaluate the ‘level of awareness’ I previously ascribed to you. I wonder if that makes sense?
The reason I thought this is because when I watched your video it didn’t seem as good a video as ‘you’ would make. It was not up to your standards. But then I got confused, because since you made the video, how could it be anything different than the video you would make? One possibility is you didn’t make the video. Barring that, I was lead to re-evaluate the video instead of you, which I’ve done for the last two days. (Although, I didn’t actually watch it again, because I thought it better to base my evaluation off my memory of it. You cannot step twice into the same river, and so seeing the video again would be a different experience than the first time, and since my comment was based on a particular viewing of your video, it would be untruthful to answer regarding a different viewing. Plus, I am a new ‘me’ now, having even read your question, and I feel I would be more inclined to give the video a positive opinion just to please you.) Upon reflecting more on the video, I came to the conclusion that maybe I just didn’t ‘get’ the video. (I think those might be your quotes.) Anyways, I’m trying to challenge all my assumptions. So now I’ve shifted from trying to evaluate the objective quality of the video to evaluating the quality of my so-called objective assessment of your video.
Gosh, this is confusing. Perhaps nothing can ever compare to your I Am Carles modeling job. And that bothers me a little bit. So perhaps my level of awareness of you was previously that you had potential for infinite creative advancement, which is obviously impossible, and my new level of awareness of you is a more realistic one in which you have already achieved your apex. But I still hope you can achieve better than that. Unless, of course, you feel that this video is the current pinnacle of your achievement, in which case you should continue wholeheartedly, but then our levels of awareness are different. I feel the video kind of missed the point somehow, and left the realm of clever incisive scathing sarcasm; and into a place where its lack of purpose or generally-accepted quality was no longer purposeful; it was not as cool as other stuff you’ve done. And I guess the crux is that if you think it is, I misevaluated your level of awareness as juxtaposed to mine. But at the same time after typing all this I am no inclined to look back on your video more fondly than I think I originally did.
But that still leaves me feeling that you and I, for better or worse, are ultimately on different levels of awareness. But then maybe you feel the same way about the video as I do. Then our levels of awareness are the same. Or perhaps, too, the video’s execution does not match your vision for it, and so again our levels of awareness may still be commensurate. So I don’t really know at all. It makes me uncomfortable to think that all you can do is guess whether another person is on the same level of awareness as you, and your guess could be proved wrong at any moment. It’s disappointing to think that, and it makes me a little sad regardless of the question of whether you and I are actually the same.
@T-Lin: Ignore my other comments. I think you assumed I was criticizing you and I wasn’t. I’m an anonymous poster on your blog, after all.
Reminds me of this time just outside of San Francisco. There was this gas station and it was on this hill. But it never felt like a hill because we were all on top of it. We could see the coast lining up down below. Perspective. Feels like hill now.
Wine glass stain fingertips.
i read 'you are a little bit happier than i am,' 'bed,' and 'sfaa' in that order, and i felt like they are different styles. i felt the difference the most between 'bed' and 'sfaa'; there are more metaphors and descriptive language in 'bed,' including kinds of phrases that include the word "thing" at the end, like "it was a shiny, difficult thing," or something, when in sfaa, there would just be the name of the thing. i think the voice in 'sfaa' and 'you are a little' are both more similar to T-Lin's blog than 'bed'.. and the voice in 'you are a little' seems more deliberately funny, and maybe less mature (but not in a necessarily bad way.. some of my favorite T-Lin writings are from that book)
i feel like the consistency in T-Lin's work is more based on a (more or less, somewhat) consistent character or persona behind the poems, who can take on different styles, but it still seems like 'oh yeah, the same person wrote this, it seems like, vaguely'
the video was sweet, tao. i like the music and the cat pictures
feel like anonymous #1 just came off as a very obvious 'attention whore' without actually making me laugh
think i have a low tolerance for things like that or something
vaguely annoyed, i suppose.
the video was funny and 'cute'
genuinely appreciate it
I think AN1 had some legitimate points. The writing style is different between Bed and SFAA, but not so much different. And I think that's in part because the subject matter and themes between Bed and SFAA are similar.
I don't think it's a devastating problem. I think it's a problem all writers deal with. Raymond Carver (at least in his short stories) seems to have the same writing style in all of his pieces. Jim Shepard seems to have different writing styles between some pieces. That alone doesn't make one author better than the other. It makes them different authors.
I'm inclined to think discussion on prose style was more a neutral observation than a direct attack on Tao Lin.
I looked up "Wikipedia" on Wikipedia once and thought that that was smart and then it just took me to some boring page about Wikipedia.
@Kevin Lee: I wasn't trying to make you laugh.
Scarborough is correct. I wasn't attacking Tao Lin, just curious about what he thinks about his writing. I don't have to be a hater just because I asked a question; if I didn't like it I would have said it fucking sucked. If you read what I wrote (and what T-Lin wrote that I was commenting about) the point was that nothing can actually suck, anyways—it just indicates that the two people are somewhat removed in terms of their awareness of each other and in how they perceive the world. I just like what he writes about, and that I can read his stuff and then actually ask him a question about his motivations and specific interpretations of the things he writes, because he actually interacts with his readers. Try that with J.K. Rowling. All you get back is a headshot signed with an autopen and a coupon for $1 off the next Harry Potter book.
i thought about this, in relation to the music video, and felt sweet:
--
Kaitlyn and Sam went upstairs into an outdoor area and each did a cartwheel. Kaitlyn broke a glass and covered her mouth with her hand. Sam covered his mouth with his hand then tried to climb onto the roof.
"You can't climb that," someone said. "And this area is closing."
@steve sweet
i used to have that cat
feel like this blog would be better overall if you had kept the party post and deleted this one.
bro...
I feel like you don't get laid much.
bro...
i'm allergic to cats....
kinda feel like cats are becoming really cool lately. before it was all about dogs like lou-dog from sublime but now its all like oh snacks the cat from best coast and shit
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