What I'm consuming

• School of Seven Bells 'Secret Days' -- new single from the new EP Put Your Sad Down. They can be catchy to the point of twee but this one is just right: Suicide meets Trent Reznor.  In this 2012 interview Paul de Revere asked SVIIB's Alejandra Deheza about the band's emotional intensity:

  School of Seven Bells' music through your lyrics feels intensely spiritual, romantic, and devotional to me. Where do you pull that intensity from?
  
  I remember when I was first experimenting with writing, I would never notice that it was any more emotional than, say, something that I'd read or whatever. It wasn't until I would give people [my lyrics] to read, and they'd feel like they walked in on something and they'd be like, "Whoa. Girl, what are you going through?" I wouldn't even think twice about it. I never really noticed that it was more emotional than maybe usual.
  
  It's kind of hard to say where it comes from because it's just very natural to me. I feel like I've always been like that, for better or for worse. Writing lyrics and melodies is a really good way for me to keep balanced. I tend to feel things really intensely, and I feel like writing kind of evens it out.

• Cat Power, '3,6,9' and 'Real Life' from the new album Sun. I find Chan Marshall talented but recessive: I never quite remember her until she comes on. I liked The Greatest, especially 'Lived in Bars.' From her 2006 Spin interview with Melissa Maerz:

  You've said you've been drinking since you were very young. What started it?
  
  People who drink habitually don't realize they're doing it, because it was part of their upbringing. Everybody from my immediate family to my grandparents to my great-grandparents -- there were always severe alcoholic and psychological problems. If your parents gave you fire to play with when you were two, you'd be standing in fire by the time you were an adult. [Before my most recent hospital stay] I was drinking from the time I woke up in the morning until the time I went to bed.
  
  You recently spent a week at the hospital. What made you decide to check yourself in?
  
  It wasn't for drinking -- this was for a reaction to drinking. This was the third time I've been in the hospital. I never really connected the dots. I never really thought, "When something bad happens, you go to the bar and turn off your emotions." I never realized that I'd gotten to the point of such depression. So that's why I can't drink anymore. I need to be able to face things.

• Psychologist Judith Schlesinger has written a book that argues that the "tortured artist" is a myth:
  

  A persistent belief, fueled by media, is that creative people more often suffer bipolar disorder or other mental illness. In The Insanity Hoax: Exposing the Myth of the Mad Genius, Judith Schlesinger builds a strong argument that there is "no compelling proof that creative people have more psychological problems than members of any other vocation group."
  
  A musician herself, as well as a psychologist, Schlesinger clearly wants to defend her artistic compatriots from what she views as unfair attacks.
  
  From her data, "it's just as easy – and much better documented – to view the creative process as healthy and life affirming," and "only one characteristic of personality and orientation to life and work is... present in ALL creative people: motivation." In fact, creative people are ...actually complicated, not crazy; they are disciplined and committed, happy to take on hard projects and work hard at them; and they are intensely focused, with a 'rage to master' their chosen domain."

• Writer's block, ironically, remains an excellent plot device. This week I saw the 'extended American' cut of The Shining. The differences between that version and the shorter cut are detailed but significant. The screening was a digital 4K print and it strobed. The opening titles rose up jerkily and during the maze scenes there were visible artefacts at the edges of the frame. Do we realise what we've gotten into with digital projection? It's shit.