Staple My Heart Closed

Jean-Christian Bourcart - Tivoli, New York State (2005) [from Collateral]

"I projected photographs of mutilated and dead Iraqis on American houses, supermarkets, churches, and parking lots. I was thinking of this new generation of kids who will be traumatized for life by growing up during wartime. It was a desperate gesture: my personal protest for the lack of interest for the non-american victims. I found the images on the web. Some American soldiers post their own pictures on a website. They would show a cut leg with the caption: “where's da rest of my shit?” Or a blown up head with the caption: “need a hair cut”. I could not help thinking of those images as some kind of restless ghosts that endlessly wander in the intermediate level of the web. I took care of them like a embalmer would; downloading, revamping, printing, rephotographiing, then projecting them as if I was looking for a place where they would rest in peace and at the same time haunt those who pretend not to know what was going on." - Jean-Christian Bourcart

Crane Your Swan Neck - Staple My Heart Closed (mp3): As I sat to write about this track in the context of Randall's appearance tonight at Madison's The Project Lodge, I was stuck by how poignantly the song projects onto Bourcart's commentary about the domestic American relationship to the daily plight of soldiers and innocent civilians in Iraq. Randall's voice moans raw and urgent in a sterile Midwest. In this desolate night his prospects are looking bleak, he's in too deep. He's crossed a line. But he is trying to tell you, he's caused pain and his regretful carcass aches.

happy birthday brian