Exhibitions and Events
Postscript 04 - Donato Mancini on Althea Thauberger
2000
Songstress
In their approach to self-marketing1 amateur songstresses often try to mimic professional marketing. Pain is slow, I watch it pass.2 Each tends to assert her eligibilities as loving (imaginary) and commodity (real) choice: sex appeal and musical talent. And it burns my heart when you say it's broken.
In music-videos of well-known women singers, the quality of the song and the quality of the body singing it are given together as the quality of the person. I walked down a hill that took me to my home. Few actually measure up to big-budget beauty standards without the help of expensive photographers. My fist clenched, I can't let go.
Far more hit songs exist about losing than finding someone, though musical talent is supposed to make you attractive. You can't hold on to what's not yours. If we judge by lyrics, in fact, the music world is a vast singles-club. I felt your golden touch.
Because it's so difficult to self-market, budding songstresses get help from coldly generous hacks. "Natasha Gaynes' voice, her playing, her songs all come together as a manifestation of who she is and what she feels"3 could be the hook-line of a desperate personals ad, if changed to first-person. The scent of your hair is a translucent fingerprint.
Thauberger makes her songstresses even more alone than that. But as morals die, sun is your disguise. She abandons them to confront the camera through ruthless, unbroken takes. Stumbling over rocks, fidgeting during instrumental breaks, none of the polished prose of editing intervenes to protect. Laid in the stretcher of time. The raw, clear recordings reveal flaws in the songs careful production would hide. The earth in me is changing.
It's not obvious, either, why the songs are so uneven in Songstress. I hear a crash and screaming all around. Young people can write good songs. I feel sunshine coming today. If the songs were a notch better, questions of why these women chose to participate would be mute; we'd assume for self-promotion. A tired laughing old man, a small dark cafe.
Some of the songs would succeed on the radio, with the right props. The wonders I have come to know. Others simply aren't photogenic enough, i.e. she's great live, the albums suck. And I know that emptiness consuming you. Lacking greater experience or budgets, all the singers of Songstress can do is convince us of the total earnestness of their appeal, and all of them do. I prayed to God: let me in. Their vulnerability shatters our protective irony.
Ask them: why do you want to be a singer? I'm moving through bright tunnels of light. Not many people can write good songs, and most could still love someone who writes lousy songs, as long as they get to know the person first. Left for the circus in my mind.
The hippies in Songstress are far the best self-marketresses and (notice) they are also the happiest. I'm covered in bruises, a purple I can kiss. This is partly because they take the natural settings as part of their outfits. Join me in dreaming lightning. But mainly it's because they aren't singing about relationships; they have a direct line on a particular audience, not you. Wind blows away the cold.
Donato Mancini
07/11/02
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1 (view personal web-pages through femmusic.com or gogirlsmusic.com)
2 all italicized lines are quotes from songs in Songstress 3 (femmusic.com or gogirlsmusic.com)