I just picked up the absolutely fantastic collaboration between DJ Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo (Goodie Mob) called Gnarls Barkley. I am a bona fide southerner, having lived in Texas and Georgia for most of my life, and my ears have a special penchant for southern music. I think it took this album to make me realize this. Especially as I write this in my LA apartment.
Yes, the move’s near completion. I’m sitting near UCLA, having just made some food and inserted the dirty dishes in the washing contraption. Its swishing forms the current musical backdrop; as does the terrific audio coming out of my speakers.
Last week, I spent time with some friends in San Francisco. There, we talked about screw music and booty music, both coming out of the South (Houston and Atlanta, most respectively) and I realized I didn’t have a single screw track, let alone a cd, of the music I claim to have pride for. So I realized this pride is imagined, constructed slowly, as soon as I knew I would be moving out of the now fabled kingdom that lies southeast of here. The kingdom moniker is part of this construction, where I romanticize Houston’s humid freeways and taquerias open late night and the slow moving, relaxed, near chud-chewing mentality that I grew to love so much over the years.
So I listen to more and more of this great album, playing it over and over again as I split open boxes and spill out their contents, seeing what I decided to cling to, and cling these objects to shelves, a floor, a bathroom. I revel in this imagined existence between a kind of California and a type of Texas. Between Danger Mouse’s LA roots and Cee-Lo’s gospel gabs.
Its a new kind of life. I’m sure I’ll get over its novelty in a few days.
