New Year 2009 GoOdByE

The end of a decade is infused with meaning. And, it's not just the end of the year, but the end of the past 10 YEARS we're looking at. A lot of space is being fill on the air, in print and on-line about what this last 10 years has meant. What's the best and worst of every category? What does it all mean?

It has been unique in many ways and you can see it reflected best in the arts. Terry Gross recently interviewed singer/songwriter Nellie McKay. McKay's sweet voice doesn't jive with the words of many of her songs and jazzy upbeat music. One song in particular, "Manhattan Avenue" is about her rough childhood in Harlem where pit bulls ripped the throats out of kittens and where she and her mother got mugged in their apartment. But the music is breezy and her voice light. There's a hallucinatory feeling to how Nellie is laughing and singing gaily about sad and disconcerting events. It's a disconnect that I think epidomizes the end of the lying-to-your face cynicism of the Bush years and the need to look at the tragedies of our decade, especially 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. We need to see it but we don't want to.

I'm trying to find a way to describe the sweetness that pulls you in, the mask, that is pulled away to reveal the darkness underneath. There's a sickness there, but it's too much to take in so we cover up with flavored cough syrup.

It's what artist Kara Walker achieved brilliantly in the late '90s with her antebellum silhouettes of horrors committed to slaves depicted in the refined and delicate 18th century art form. At first glance, Walker's art looks decorative and pretty. It's intricate and appealing. Then you get closer and see that the silhouettes are of slaves being raped and young white children abusing already abused black women. Walker was on the cutting edge, but I'll consider her part of this decade because of the influence her art had and still has.

There's also the art of Takashi Murakami. His super sweet large eyed anime creatures reveal disturbing and often horrifying realities. Sometimes it's purely whimsical, but sometimes it's a dream or fantasy that turns into a nightmare. There is a digital installation at the MOCA in Japan Town/downtown LA that beautifully shows this transition. It's a chiho aoshima piece that starts with large leaves and flowers, lovely brightly colored crickets and non-threatening creatures move, grow, evolve. There are undulating alive buildings with faces and blinking lights swaying in the background. Happy commerce in the background of changing nature. Slowly, things turn dark and the cute creatures turn into severed heads of once-cute girls spiked on the same plants we admired earlier.

What should we call this? There must already be a name for it.

A phrase just popped into my head: "Is that blood?"