2011, My Most Favorite 30 Tracks of the Year

30. "Kaputt" Destroyer

29. "Riding for the Feeling", Bill Callahan

28. "Thought Ballune", Unknown Mortal Orchestra

27. "Modern Art", Black Lips

26. "Same Mistake", Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

25. "County Line", Cass McCombs

24. "Speaking in Tongues", Arcade Fire

23. "Hits Me Like A Rock", CSS

22. "New Beat", Toro y Moi

21. "There is a Light That Never Goes Out", Dum Dum Girls

20. "Helplessness Blues", Fleet Foxes

19. "Should Have" Cloud Nothings

18. "Wake and be Fine", Okkervil River

17. "Tree by the River", Iron and Wine

16. "Damn These Vampires", The Mountain Goats

15. "Take Me Over", Cut Copy

14. "Soak it Up", Houses

13. "Holdin' On to Black Metal", My Morning Jacket

12. "Polish Girl", Neon Indian

11. "Forget That You're Young", The Raveonettes

10. "Santa Fe", Beirut

9. "Holing Out", Yuck

8. "Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win", Beastie Boys

7. "Eyes Be Closed", Washed Out

6. "Jesus Fever", Kurt Vile

5. "Other Side", Family Portrait

4. "All Die Young", Smith Westerns

3. "Holocene", Bon Iver

2. "Midnight City", M83

1. "Video Games", Lana Del Rey

2011, My Ten Most Favorite Albums of the Year

10. "Apocalypse", Bill Callahan
 Good ol' Bill does it again. Haunting, sweeping, pining, melancholy.














9. "I Am Very Far", Okkervil River
Will Scheff conjures up a different sounding batch of songs. No storyline evolving here. Just some complicated, yet straight-forward songwriting.













 











8. "Circuital", My Morning Jacket
(see here)















7. "Kiss Each Other Clean", Iron and Wine
There is much to like here. Except the cover art. Sorry, Sam.














 












6. "Yuck", Yuck
Do you like Dinosaur Jr, Galaxie 500, Pixies, and Built to Spill? Yeah, so do these kids.















5. "Within and Without", Washed Out
(see here)





























                                                                             4. "Arabia Mountain", Black Lips
How would you like to have a psychedelic party with a pack of outcasts from society? Play this album and party on.













3. "Dye it Blonde", The Smith Westerns
 This album is a swinging, rollicking good time. These Chicago boys craft catchy hooks, and some surprising well-placed changes in song structure. Think of a Beatles' final 8-bars, then listen to "All Die Young" or "Dance Away". You'll be reminded of the fabulous britpop of the early 1990s. In a good way.








 

2. "Smoke Ring For My Halo", Kurt Vile
This album is much cleaner than some of his lo-fi early work, but this added polish is friggin' magnificent! I just love the sound of this album. The acoustic guitars ring, pushing the EQ into the red, clean, angelic notes, above a dirty, mumbling voice. This is a set of songs that deserves to be played through your headphones, directly into your ears. On repeat. Give it a couple of spins, and tell me I'm wrong. I dare you.










1. "Bon Iver", Bon Iver

Hands down. Greatest album released this year. Mark my words. When this decade closes in nine years, we will all be a little older, but this album will still be among our favorites. Again, I will mention the sound  of this album. It creates a feeling, a feeling of wind sweeping across a frozen Minnesota meadow. Wind chimes echoing, hidden by the horizon. Of frozen lakes, breaking the early morning sun's light into a blinding prism.

I won't be surprised if this wins the Grammy (since Arcade Fire was recognized last year). But fuck the Grammys. I like that Justin Vernon agrees with me.
His awesome quote, “I don’t think the Bon Iver record is the kind of record that would get nominated for a Grammy — I would get up there and be like, ‘This is for my parents, because they supported me,’ because I know they would think it would be stupid of me not to go up there,” Vernon said. “But I kinda felt like going up there and being like: ‘Everyone should go home, this is ridiculous. You should not be doing this. We should not be gathering in a big room and looking at each other and pretending this is important.’"

Everyone deserves to treat their soul, just a little bit. Go ahead and spoil yourself. Get this album.  

2011, Best Debut Album of the Year

"Within and Without", Washed Out

Ernest Green burst onto the indie scene in 2009 with his EP, Life of Leisure. Literally, he burst onto the scene. Possibly single handedly creating his own sub-genre of indie electronic music, Chillwave. Others followed, such as Toro y Moi and Neon Indian, but Washed Out did it best.

The debut full length, Within and Without, pushes the flavor he first served us. It is a nine song sonic texture, built of layers of nostalgia for pop radio of the late 1980s and 1990s, filtered and condensed together in a tight synth space that is so easy to fall right into. This album is like a soft pillow on your favorite couch. It is the most sensual touch (see the album cover to feel it further). I'm not sure I know any lyrics on this album, but it does not matter. This album is a feeling. And I feel it all around.

2011, Best Album Cover of the Year

"I Am Very Far," Okkervil River

Disclaimer: Any year that Okkervil River releases an album, it will be the best album cover art. Simple reason why... William Schaff just might be my favorite living artist. And he does every Okkervil River cover (among other bands, as well).

For proof of this, ask to to see the Schaff illustration I have tattooed on my back.

2011, Most Disappointing Album of the Year

"The Rip Tide", Beirut


Sorry, Zach. This album didn't work. Maybe "Most Disappointing" is a bit harsh. I could say, rather, the "Most Boring, When I Expected Much More Album of the Year". I had come to expect big things from Beirut. Mr. Condon's first two full-lengths are essential, The Gulag Orkestar, and The Flying Club Cup.

These songs from these albums were built upon 19th century European folk structures and traditions, ornamented by old-world instrumentation and a haunting, crooning voice that seeped from the speakers.

The Rip Tide seems to be a step backwards. Not sideways, or in the wrong direction. Just backwards. The songs are not bad, by any means. They are just not as exciting. They lack the deep, lush, arrangements I had come to love from Beirut. They hit anticipated notes. The song-writing seems rushed this time around. It almost listens like a B-sides album. Songs that would have fit in on the first two records, but they would have been low points, encircled by greatness.






That said, I still do really like this song:

2011: Comeback Album of the Year

"Circuital" My Morning Jacket   

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate bands who make efforts to further their sound, to move past what they have already done. However, these endeavors are not always successful.

Exhibit A: My Morning Jacket's 2008 release, Evil Urges. I just didn't get that album. It wasn't the My Morning Jacket I fell in love with. It was some weird progressive tribulation. I've never listened to King Crimson, but I imagine that is what King Crimson sounds like.

And it saddened me. My Morning Jacket were one of my favorite bans back then. At Dawn is pure magic. Still. It alternates from the skeletal folk-rock designs of The Tennessee Fire, to the full-stereo majesty of songs that tickle the Northern Lights from down-home Louisville like "The Way That He Sings". It's a beautiful record. Love at first listen. Hooked.

Next. I enjoyed the density and development of It Still Moves. It is a thick, heavy record. No bones are left showing from The Tennessee Fire. Z followed, and Jim James brought to the forefront some new sounds and revealed a funky love of Cosmic American Music. It was more Prince and Elton John than Neil Young, but I still dug it.

2011. Welcome back, Jacket. Circuital is solid. It reinvigorated my excitement for My Morning Jacket. It is a BIG salad containing bits and tastes of everything that makes Jim James' songs so touching, and still manages to push the band's sound in exciting new directions. It's not an uncontrollable meteor hurling God-knows-where like Evil Urges seemed to me. It's focused in its creativity and its craft.

Righteous Guitar Solo below:

Keep The Car Running

Or, one song of Temecula I sang

It was already late enough and the road was full of fallen branches. Thrown into De Portola’s two lanes by the storm with the geometry and precision of Pollock, his bucket and his canvas on the floor. The clouds above left ajar for the moment, revealed the stars as flashlights searching for the moon. The two dim headlights of the inherited Ford Falcon persevered forward and illuminated each branch and stick that was a moment away from being trampled beneath the four old tires. The sound of each snap and break of damp, rotting wood joined together into its own soundtrack, at irregular intervals, cracking louder than the hissing tape deck. 

With his hands gripping the worn steering wheel, Carson piloted the Falcon through the wild calm of the night. The fan of his mohawk, frozen with gel, pointed our direction forward, to outrun the rain that would return. The rain that knocked to the ground the branches gravity could not tug down on their own, washed into the middle of the road by the sudden tiny rivers, formed tiny lakes on the dirt shoulders of De Portola. Out the windows somewhere, far back from the mud gathering were houses and horses and orange trees, but we could not see them. 

On the passenger side of the bench front seat, I sat with my black boots up on the red dashboard. With one hand I reached through my side window, just cracked open, to grab hold of the cold night. To try to take it apart and keep a piece of it with me always. In the backseat sat two more of our motley group, with their fists raised in elation, singing louder and louder at each defiant chorus coming from the speakers. Somewhere above the music emanating from the squealing, obsolete stereo, sat the resonance of the wind fighting to enter the Falcon, the popping of the branches left in the road, and the laughing, shouting spirit of teenage declarations of independence. 

Carson could take us in the Falcon anywhere. All that mattered was that it went, leaving behind the driveways and manicured lawns of our parents’ homes. To speed past responsibilities and due dates and part-time burger shifts, that would, no doubt, always anticipate our return. Carson asked, Where are we going tonight? The answer came from the backseat, To the pier! The Falcon would then turn left, sending all in gravity’s sway to the passenger side, and avoid the few main roads of Temecula and its freeway onramps, to instead take Pala Road. The long way to Oceanside and its pier.

The clouds drifted in the opposite direction from our path, and the stars turned on, full power, to become a thousand tiny projectors setting the scene outside the Falcon’s windows. We watched the dance of the desert wind through the outstretched branches, extending and grabbing at the Falcon.  We watched the yellow dashes in the road turn to elongated lines. We watched the residue of the rain play with the reflections of the streetlights above, melting red and green crayons on the wet road.  

Once outside of Temecula, Carson sailed the Falcon through the bends and turns of the lightless Pala Road. Our little escape. With the radio on. Roadrunner, Roadrunner, from the backseat they sang. Going a thousand miles an hour. Roadrunner, Roadrunner, with the radio on. Carson never sang along. He just smiled with each sharp veer of the road and gripped the steering wheel tighter. 

We entered the barren neighborhoods of the Indian reservations, and their ghosts, in those days before the casinos were built. Mobile homes, and crooked satellite dishes. A pay phone placed at a random empty intersection as if it were picked up once by a mighty wind and dropped down for no one to use. We swept through the farm town Bonsall, trying our best to awaken it. But it remained asleep, nestled beneath its blanket of citrus and darkness. 

We stopped when we ran out of road. Oceanside and its pier. Carson parked the Falcon and we made our way onto the oversized plank that reached out into the never ending blackness of the ocean at night. Excited by the terrifying nothingness of infinity, we all leaned on the railing and either stared out or down. It did not really matter. No one could tell where ocean ended and sky began. Stray singular lights of ocean liners or oil tankers, inconsistent, dotted the horizon. We might have talked about girls, movies, or school, and laughed. We might not have talked at all. We might have stood in smoke and silence, louder than each wave that rolled onto sand, just like it did over and over again, before we were there and would over and over again after we were gone. When the rain returned it tickled the skin of the ocean and we piled into the Falcon. Two in the backseat. My boots back on the dashboard. Carson started the car, and we left.   

The Minutemen "History Lesson - Part 2"

Or, Our Band Could Be Your Life

"Punk rock changed our lives." D Boon and Mike Watt learned punk rock in Hollywood, driving up from San Pedro. They would pogo at X shows. Listen to the song - it tells you the whole story. All you need to know. D Boon and Mike Watt playing guitars.

In 1980, D Boon, Mike Watt formed The Minutemen. George Hurley was eventually added as their permanent drummer. They opened up for Black Flag on their first gig. Enough said.

Their magnum opus was, of course, 1984's double-album, Double Nickels on the Dime, released on the seminal LA punk label, SST records. It sprawls across 43 iconoclastic songs that cannot be labelled. There are many shining highlights. There also are as many songs that do not reflect light out at the listener, they remain hidden. The standout track, in my opinion, is History Lesson - Part 2.

The song is tender. It feels of a hug from a friend. A song of friendship. Upon first listen I declared it the greatest song I had ever heard! Possibly. Perhaps the least punk rock sounding song on the record, but the one that most embodied their punk rock ethos. "Our band could be your life."

This song immediately fit into my life, and still serves as an important jigsaw puzzle piece to my identity. In high school, my friend Mike and I dove head first into punk rock the best that we could. There was no driving up to Hollywood from suburban Temecula in 1995. Punk was already long gone, broke and dead. In order to become punks, we had to do research. Hours spent at Spin records listening to every Sex Pistols, Clash, Ramones and Buzzcocks album Spin had in stock. Combing through the library (or Barnes and Noble), searching for a copy of England's Dreaming. We adorned our thrift store clothing with safety pins and slogans of nihilism. "We were fucking corn dogs."

Of course, I can reminisce with a smile about these endeavors, now. The punk rock phase left a permanent mark into my being, just as every phase other phase did for me, as well. It is a piece of me that when I stretch out and ponder about, I have to picture myself and Mike singing Dead Kennedy lyrics around town. Together. Close friendship. And the gang of other deviants and characters that surrounded us. Punk rock can mean "friendship" when I think long enough about it.

That is what grabs at me every time I hear History Lesson - Part 2. It means friendship. D Boon and Mike Watt playing guitars.

In 1985, while touring, D Boon died when his van crashed. Mike Watt has dedicated every artistic thing he has done since then to his friend, D Boon.

"Video Games", Lana Del Rey

Or, heaven is a place on earth where you...

The clouds above the high desert will part when the harp is plucked. The string section is warm. The piano is a pillow. The sun pours down. It lights up the chrome trim of the old Chevy hood as it motors ahead. Los Angeles bound. A gang of psychedelic gangsters.

Lee Hazelwood drives with one hand on gripping the wheel, the other massaging his black mustache. Nancy Sinatra is in the passenger seat blowing kisses to herself in the rear view mirror. I'm in the back seat, reading Ginsberg.

Then her voice appears. A haunting beautiful monotone. The crooning of a girl dressed up to be a woman. An announcement that Los Angeles will soon appear, shining out on the horizon. It is mesmerizing.

Who is this singing, Lee? Nancy asks. She is still staring at herself in the rear view.

Lee stares towards Los Angeles.

It's Lana Del Rey, I answer, still reading Ginsberg.

Who is this, Lee? She sounds an awful lot like me? Nancy asks. 

Lee stares towards Los Angeles.

It's "Video Games" by Lana Del Rey, I answer, louder, and I close Howl for the time being.

The three psychedelic gangsters  are hypnotized through the chorus. Heaven is a place on earth where you, tell me all the things you want to do.

Then Nancy says, Phaedra is my name.

It is you, Lee answers.

Some velvet morning when I'm straight, I'm going to open up the door to your Studio City apartment, and sit down with a beer, and watch you stand with your back against the wall and mouth the words to this song. Playin' video games. You will pout and make your growing lips dance a tango above each other.

This is what Lee Hazelwood says to Lana Del Rey.

This is what I say about Video Games. The song is sensual. It is seductive. And the chorus will live inside your head for a few days. Lingering like a floral perfume hanging onto a pillow. Somewhere, before the final repeating of the chorus, the song gets a bit repetitive. I might want it to stop. I might want to listen to something else, or maybe nothing at all. However, some time during the day that will follow, I will find myself singing to myself

Heaven is a place on earth where you...

Las Vegas is a Garden of Desperation

Or, what I thought about while I sat in a swimming pool that was too warm to be refreshing, in a rented house in Las Vegas, wishing I was home.


Damn the gardener that bred Las Vegas out of the dust in the Mojave Desert. Vines that climb the scaffolding of the gaming casinos, blink like cheap rhinestones in the night sky. Straight desert trail paved with blacktop that runs as the boulevard between the monolithic towers. Each one faces the other, across the boulevard, in a posturing of gambling and excess. Within their walls, wander the vapid on vacation, admiring the faux architecture and fabricated restaurants, wander the desperate chasing one last deal, wander the weary, eye-worn zombies, sugar alcohol ice drink in one hand and a twenty dollar bill in the other, seeking the siren of the last table to lay it down upon.

Seeds poured from criminal fingers into the Old Spanish Trail. Hoover built a dam. The workers drank gasoline and breathed hopelessness. The showgirls danced through the night, captivating eyes that were not following the roulette wheel. Atomic cocktails were poured into labelled glasses, as the anguished watched the mushroom clouds gather across the horizon. Each wretched stare a mirror of the next, waiting for the fateful explosion to overtake this evil garden.

Vegas earned a new coat of paint and the agonized keep arriving in droves. The herd walks from the 110 degree habitat into the recycled air provided by Howard Hughes and the gangsters. Pit bosses stare out from behind the tables, waiting for one wrong move. Strippers stare out from around the poles, sizing up their prey.

Vegas is not even Vegas. Residing in Las Vegas are the outcast the casinos employ, spew out, only to be consumed over again. The casinos, magnets for the disheartened, sits in Paradise. Baptized by organized crime, unincorporated. To make sure that gambling towers do not have to contribute revenue to the actual city of Las Vegas. Paradise.

The real Las Vegas is no paradise. It is a desert purgatory, where the wasted wash across wide streets, empty save for liquor stores and gas stations. Liquor and gas. The two things the tormented need to escape the gravity of the strip.

No More Heroes Anymore

Or, my complete fabrication of the night before Leon Trotsky was assassinated

On the sepia tiled counter rests a pile of swollen, ripe avocados. Oblong, uneven, pimpled turtle shells, waiting to be disemboweled and served alongside salt, lime and tortillas. In the main room, a Spanish record is playing. Andres Segovia plucks a melancholy classical guitar. The music is an eerie stranger in this hacienda in Coyoacan, just outside Mexico City. Most of the guards are out in the grass smoking. The house help have taken a stroll down the peaceful street, lined with trees.

The Spanish melody is carried out onto the balcony, where Leon Trotsky reclines. One hand caresses his mustache, the other is wet from the condensation of his glass. Vodka, ice and lime. The balcony doors relax wide open. The Mexican breeze breathes in and out of the house, pushing and pulling the crimson curtains with each inhale, each exhale. Leon sips in silence, squints behind his horn-rimmed glasses out at the tomato and cilantro gardens below. The Spanish guitar reminds him of the stories his comrades had told him, of their fighting in Spain against the fascists, two years before. Before the disaster at Ebro. He closes his eyes and sets aside his thoughts of continuing global revolution for another time. He only thinks about the nylon notes from inside, percussive pizzicato dancing.

           There is an article that needs revision resting on his desk inside. Tomorrow it will get my full attention, Leon says to himself, in Spanish, with a Russian accent. Leon does not know it yet, but he will never finish this piece. He gets up from the long chair and walks to lean against the rail of the balcony. The cross that stands atop the tallest church in Coyoacan is the only thing that seems to be as high as he is, at that moment. Standing on the balcony, staring out at a town that is not his home, but has been his home, his little fortress for four years now. Leon does not know that this will be the last time he will ever do this.

Leon does not know that tomorrow night he will invite a false-named visitor into his study to listen to the unfinished article. The visitor, sent by Stalin, will lay his raincoat on a table. Leon will not see the ice axe hidden beneath. The assassin, Ramon Mercader, will call himself Jacques Mornard. Leon will begin to read aloud the article when the assassin, Jacques/Ramon, takes the ice axe from the raincoat, grips with one hand, eyes closed, and strikes Leon a “terrible blow to the head.” Two guards from outside the study will rush in to see Trotsky, still fighting with the assassin and landing one last defiant gob of spit, propelled onto his face. The guards overtake the assassin, and Trotsky will shout, Do Not Kill Him! This man has a story. Natalia, Leon’s wife will rush to his side erupting tears and Russian cries. Leon will utter for her ears only, Now it is done. Natalia will understand. Years of waiting for the inevitable will end. Leon turns to face the assassin, pinned to the wood of the study floor by the two guards. He cannot see the face of Jacques/Ramon, his horn-rimmed glasses remain atop the desk above. Leon will quickly understand what has to happen. His last words will be, I will not survive this attack.

          In the kitchen, upon the sepia tile counter, the avocados remain, untouched. Their colors change due to neglect. They will soon no longer be good to anyone. The inevitability of decomposition. Weeks later, one of the last guards left will take the Segovia record when he thinks no one is looking. To be swift, to avoid falling under suspicious eyes he will hide the record beneath a trench coat and scurry out of the room and into the yard. Never turning to take one last look at interior of the hacienda.

Eroica,

 Or a Feeble Attempt To Connect the Eroica, Eroica of Basquiat’s work to his friendship with Andy Warhol.

            Jean-Michel Basquiat scribbles Eroica in violence. Eroica is not “Erotica” misspelled, as I thought at first. It means “heroic” in Italian, a reference to Beethoven’s Third Symphony, once known as Sinfonia Eroica. Basquiat scribbles it over and over. It loses its meaning to me. A hero stands alone, atop a rock facing the storm and the sea. A hero walks away, solitary, when the applause ends. Heroes do not multiply. A hero is prime.

            I am not a Basquiat aficionado, but I am an admirer. I would never dare claim to comprehend the stream of conscious neo-expressionist scrawling that adorn many of his works. I stand back, hands behind myself, and let the jigsaw puzzle pieces fall from the box to the wooden gallery floor. I grab a handful and compare them to the image on the box. I realize that every piece before me belongs to different puzzles. They do not belong together. Their fractions cannot be combined. But couldn’t there be a chance that two puzzle pieces, from separate puzzles, could fit, one into the other. The image formed may not be linear, but isn’t it possible that they could at least fit into each other?

            Basquiat scribbles Eroica in multiplication. Then, Man Dies. Man Dies. Man Dies. Man Dies. Heroes do not die. They wear immortality as a cape. They shine, blue streaks, highlighting the sun in their black hair. Think Superman, in the comics. Or else, they are idols who possess no super powers. These idols inspire young impressionable sorts in high school. Teens seeking out an identity, a code.  In this case, it helps if they are already dead. Basquiat might have said, “The only artists who really mattered died young.”

            In 1987, Andy Warhol died. Ten years later, in high school, I developed an obsession to all things Andy Warhol. One of the numerous, dead idols I carried then. I bought book a book that collected all of his works so I could stare at a hundred soup cans, Marilyns and Maos. I dove into photographs from his “factory” in New York City. I listened to the Velvet Underground. Over and over. I wanted to be inside that scene, a player upon his avant garde stage. Through obsessing over Warhol, I first learned of Basquiat. The fictional story of how Basquiat walked up to Warhol in a cafe and asked the master if he wanted to buy some of his work. After that, the story goes, the two became inseparable. Basquiat, invited to work with his hero. The man he had fantasized about meeting. Artists collaborating, together. Basquiat welcomed being thrust into the spotlight of the art world. The new darling, rising up from the streets of New York City, bringing with him hop-hop and punk, graffiti and street art, skulls colored with Haitian voodoo. He dated Madonna.

            Basquiat crosses out Eroica. The X deletes the hero. The X instantly washes his heroism away. First you read HEROISM, next, it is gone. This is how the artist says nothing, with force, thundering silence. What is behind the act of crossing out your own words, for public consumption?

            Sonic Youth sang Kill Your Idols in 1983. Beethoven composed the Sinfonia Eroica in 1803. He dedicated it to Napoleon Bonaparte, who was then First Consul of France. The new leader, to lead anew. A short, Corsican, idol. Napoleon’s reign began with France at peace with the world. This soon changed. Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, a Roman Caesar reincarnate. Napoleon invaded every border in Europe. Beethoven is said to have raged, “So he is no more than a common mortal! Now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!” Beethoven crossed out Napoleon. Eroica.

            In 1987, Andy Warhol died. It is said that in the years before this, the friendship between Basquiat and Warhol had grown strained. Warhol’s efforts to separate him from drugs were in vain. Into Basquiat’s ears, some said Warhol was using Basquiat. That Warhol did not respect the contributions Basquiat made to their joint efforts. That Basquiat was to Warhol, just another character in the factory, there for Andy’s amusement.

            Basquiat first scribbled Eroica in 1987. Before Andy Warhol’s death. Basquiat again scribbled Eroica in 1988. Was their friendship ever mended? I wonder. After Warhol’s death Basquiat coiled into depression, deeper into the chasms of heroin addiction. In 1988, he died from an overdose, combining cocaine and heroin, in his apartment on Great Jones Street in Manhattan. 27 years old.  Buried in Brooklyn.

            At times, when I should be doing something else, I ponder about Basquiat’s reaction to Warhol’s death. Basquiat sits alone in the corner of his studio. He is not painting pieces of vibrant colors clashing against each other in a violent dance. We do not see his Haitian, hip-hop, boxing influences. We only see works in white. He is squiggling words over each other. He breathes remorse. He pauses, writes Man Dies. Stops. Repeat. Repeat. Basquiat walks away from the work and into darkness. He retreats to the streets, carrying a walkman with a Dead Boys tape inside. And inside his mind, addict’s hallucinations, musings of himself as painting’s Charlie Parker, and the needle. Riding with death, beside him. Somewhere between heroism and the rapid inevitability of his demise. The need to reconcile the death of his friend. The hero he abandoned, who in turn abandoned him.