subtlety

I am (warning: shocking news coming) not always the most subtle person in the world. This is particularly true when it comes to my music. I tend to have a fairly "smack you in the face" style of applying guitar effects. I have been, in my last two rock bands, the "throw in a loud guitar solo" guy (which, to be fair, was my assigned band role; my last singer used to, when describing new songs, say "and Mike goes crazy here"). And my guitar tone has been, until lately, of the "how much distortion can one add?" variety (although to be fair, I have been trying to rectify the situation, and my new amp really helps).

Writing-wise, I am also not the most subtle person. As an example, last night, I started writing a song called "The Hate Blues"; it's about (warning: shocking news coming) everything that I hate, everything that makes me wanna strangle baby ducks. I do have some more subtle songs, but subtle artistry is something on which I need to seriously work.

So it was with great admiration that I read a great interview with Chuck Palahniuk about Fight Club 2. I loved the original. On the surface, it was a very in-your-face film, from the direction, to the photography, to the acting. Then you got to the twist, and you realized you were watching a much more subtle, in-depth film than you thought. This is exactly the thing I love in narratives.

The sequel also looks intriguing. Instead of a film, it's a comic book...so it employs a completely different set of writing tricks. One of the things Palahniuk and his collaborators talk about in the interview is deliberately obscuring panels by overlaying objects over the art and dialogue.

This idea of designed obscurity utterly fascinates me. I don't exactly know what the musical analogue would be...yet, that is. This is definitely an avenue for further investigation.

Being not-so-subtle and subtle at the same time would be very zen. It would also be pretty cool.