I've been posting about David Byrne lately, I guess, because unlike most other folks, his Talking Heads period kind of went right by me. But now that's he's gone solo, I find that I like some of his work. Not all of it, but some of it. I bought, and like, the soundtrack, Lead Us Not Into Temptation, that he did for Young Adam, and a recent CD, Grown Backwards. Now he notes in his journal a future project involving Imelda Marcos: "For a future project I've been reading biographies of Imelda Marcos. The Rise and Fall of...Steel Butterfly...and now The Untold Story. As a kind of theoretical counterpoint I've also begun William Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down (the abridged version)- his attempt to determine if violence is sometimes justified, and if so, when. I think there may be a connection between the two sets of books, we'll see."

So let's see: will it be a power-point presentation involving lots of shoes? All I can say is, not the shoes, Mr. Byrne, NOT THE SHOES!!!!!

I do get a bit tired of Westerners going on and on about Imelda Marcos, fascinated as they are with the grotesquerie of her reign. That gaze just deflects from much more urgent issues, like, say, the trafficking of child prostitutes, the damaging toxic waste left in Philippine towns by U.S. military bases, the forgotten Philippine-American war, the plight of Filipino overseas contract workers...Still, I'm curious to see what he does with this.  ¶ 6:12 PM