We're here to see an old ritual start again, built from preserved schematics and sewn from a continuous thread of anguish and pain. We've all brought our own pain and we're here to offer it up, some of us more stylishly than others, some of us older and further still from grace, some of us fatter and with more hair, hair in awkward and fearsome places, hair that makes us think of death.
JD expresses concern for the health of the performers; they are technicians, they are precision drivers into radiant discord, and they also look a little like our aging parents. Their actions are to be held close now in memory, because they cannot last forever. If this be some mislaid and freakish tribe, these are (if not elders) then our most senior warriors, scarred and broken, precise from the memory of a thousand futile hunts.
I offer DX a Sour Patch Kid and he refuses. I think to myself that I'm getting old too, that the time comes when a man must put down Sour Patch Kids. When I was young, I thought of childish things. Now that I'm old, I like sour things. I think about buying (but do not buy) a second pack.
The opening act a kind of mis-adventure; leading with the promise of gorgeous accordion that fills the old and lonely hall with sorrow, with pain remembered from across the sea, long ago. Followed by (it sounded) the ramblings of a charmless troubadour, the one you always end up stuck talking to at the party. A nice enough person, I'm sure.
From this you fear that order will never appear but out of the din arises Thor, sturdy and true, down-laying a blanket or better a sea of bells. Now the water is put to fire, now the angels fly from it, their eyes alit too; now they are burning, lighting the night sky with the pain of lost love.
This is a first show, this is a holding together, the eyes of the band locked to the central drummer, he and the bassist with the whole band and the whole audience hanging on each move. We are wishing, we are holding together and praying and by some point we are angels too, transported, on fire, over the ocean.
When Thor takes off his shirt you know you have arrived, but don't let it distract you. The man obviously goes to the gym; a nod to health, to health's need, to the rule of the body. Gira (this really happened) describes his naked body as ice cream on a stick, with "a little thing sticking out." Near the end of the show the thread is nearly lost, the rhythm section must rally. Gira implores, the table nearly skews but for its near loss the fire burns only moreso higher, only moreso killing and scalding and renewing, moreso branding or tattooing us in our shared pain.
At shows I retreat to my head and listen too technically, for mistakes, for chord progressions, for melody in its fluid parameters, a million ways to listen and stay in my head, detached, barely dancing, always self conscious. But at some point in this show I am really transported, non-technical, lost in time in a way that has never happened to me before, set into a pinball collage of old memories of pain.
I remember a boy a long time ago, a young boy just a little older than my son, remember his confused pain and all the pain that followed it a bit predictably, stupidly, unconsciously, the pain I've felt, the myriad and shameful pain I've caused. All I can remember is pain, stupid pain, futile and ridiculous pain, and I feel sorry for that boy at a distance, as if he were another person I remembered.
All around the room you see faces intent, offering, all of us here to offer our pain, here with the hope that it can be channeled in this ritual, poured out of us and into the loud air, blown free and leaving our spirits lighter, more alive, less drowning in time and memory, for God so loved the world he gave his only son.
Why do the angels hide their eyes from the light, graceless and ashamed, aloft in a stellar column, awaiting heaven's fire. What do they remember of their sin, what of it did they cherish, for what is their skin full of memory, their mouths, their fingers alive with the memory of fire.
Why do they mis-hang their heads, their limbs, why are their eyes so without life, what do they share of their last dreams, their pain, the looks of the ones they knew, or loved. Once there were their mouths, their fingers, kissing fire from tongue to tongue, once they lived.
Swans show @ the Trocadero, 9/28/10.
9.28.2010
9.24.2010
rhinoceros
This is going to sound a little weird but the other day when I was cleaning the basement I found the skeleton of a rhinoceros. I'm pretty sure it was a young rhinoceros. I'm not going to lie, when a man reaches a certain age and loses control of his basement and the years go by sluggish but inevitable -- like plus-sized models heralding hand-me-down fall fashion on a cheap and freely available kind of ketamine -- when that man one day can stand it no more and he cleans his basement and unearths the skeleton of a rhinoceros, it gives him pause.
When that day comes a man takes stock.
I'm clear on the fact that cleaning the basement was probably overdue. Most reasonable observers or agencies concerned for the welfare of the young or the population at large would tell you it was. When I told my wife I was finally going to clean the basement (my tone hopeful, my eyes full of romantic spark and pointed vaguely in the direction of her face) she grunted and began softly to cry, which I took to mean that she knew for sure that the cleaning was long overdue and in fact by this point totally insufficient. Then my wife buried her face in her hands and cried less softly and it was five or ten minutes before she could watch TV or text or even drink.
I was determined to clean the basement myself. On TV when a man loses control of his house (or even when he just falls a little behind for a few years) all these TV people basically surprise him at his house in the dead of night and like rape him or punch him in the stomach or face until he cries on camera, then his relatives testify to how impossible and selfish he is until he cries some more, then a therapist asks him why he's crying and while he answers a dozen or so people in ninja costumes break down his door and rape or punch him again and wisk everything that isn't nailed down to the town square for a televised sacrificial bonfire.
You can spare me that, friend. When I make a mess or get a little behind on things I want to handle it myself, even if it takes me a while to get to it. And it isn't like having a clean house is some salve or boon. If your house is perfectly clean you still have to live in it with the same people you lived with before, you just have less stuff now to distract you.
If for some reason it *were* me on TV, I wouldn't be the bozo clutching my privates defensively and blubbering to the camera about my lost years or how I never really knew what a clean house was. I'd have fun with it. There'd be outright sabotage ("oh, I see you found the deadly adders... I'd nearly lost hope"). There would be costumes; I'd spend most but not all of the episode dressed as a chicken, and the rest of it in a bathrobe. There would also be a room prepared for weeks in advance wherein (I would try to convince them) I routinely expressed my heartfelt belief that my urine should be preserved in three liter bottles that had once held Wegman's Diet Root Beer, and that feces is the living expression of God's will and should be smeared liberally onto the faces of all who enter my home.
As I said, when I found the rhinoceros it gave me pause. I consulted with my wife, who spat in my face and kicked me in the balls, which I took to mean that she also had no memory of having a rhinoceros of indeterminate age in our house at any point. But then she got a beer and sat watching ESPN, which I took as a positive sign, a flicker of possibility that "the grill was still hot."
Back downstairs I puzzled over the skeleton. I thought about having a yard sale or hawking it on Craigslist but I remembered, probably from TV, that most of the time that's just an excuse someone makes when they aren't ready to part with their loot.
I thought of working the rhinoceros skeleton into the decor of the basement, making it the focal point of some prehistoric man-cave, but I figured more than likely it would just end up piled under thousands of copies of The Sporting News, exactly as it had been before. I thought of the ninjas and the masked gentleman with the taser and my brother-in-law explaining what a douche I was on national TV. I thought of my children and what they'd say, what their friends would say, what their own future children would say. Most of all I thought of the spirit of the rhinoceros, held bound to earth, lost and alone in a suburban landscape that it never could have chosen for itself.
Then I started breaking down the skeleton into the smallest groupings I could get it into and started piling those in trash bags, and I bagged until my hands bled, and then I bagged some more.
When I got back from the dump my wife was on the porch drinking mojitos. I told her I'd made real progress and asked if she might make me a mojito. She told me to fuck myself and called me by another man's name, which I took to mean make your own mojito.
I did and we sat out on the porch, listening to the summer cars out on the freeway, to the swift and loving passage of time, and I knew it would all be fine.
9.22.2010
Mix Like a Master
Albeit abjectly listened squinting into the far corners of non-isolated earbud soundplanes, albeit detuned and fractured into fragments by the loud subway scrape of metal in an interminably ferocious battle to the death with like metal; albeit imperfectly heard perhaps to the point of not being there at all he still could swear he heard a whispered voice in the far back right of this one track, beginning exactly at this point shortly after 2 minutes into the track that he skipped back to for the rest of the ride downtown.
The trouble followed him up the street and into his apartment, through making dinner and eating standing at the kitchen counter and staring meaninglessly at a book with the player cued unconsciously back and back before declaring it pointless, closing the book, turning out all the lights and dipping back into the track again.
He poured himself a drink, lit mood lights and even smoked a joint: There simply wasn't any understanding what was being whispered from 2:04 to 2:19 in this godforsaken track. He tried changing the equalizer settings and plugging the thing into his stereo with an auxiliary wire, he borrowed better headphones from his neighbors (a little too stoned to venture out, but not so much so that he couldn’t pull it off). Nothing did it. It wasn't an exceptional record, it wasn't anything he'd listened to more than a dozen or so times, but this tucked in corner of this one song would be his defeat or his turning point, his entree into a new world of close attention, of deep listening and an acolyte's awareness, of no longer fail.
There has to be a way to remove some parts of a song in real time. This should be a feature of the format by now, he thinks, that mixing down ceases to be a prerequisite for the transfer to home listening. Rather, every song should be delivered whole, to be mixed listeners in real time. He pictures the whisper isolated and looped by itself or accompanied by the barest spectral synth or TR-808 pulse, and the thrill of deciphering the code. He briefly searches online for software with such a deconstructive feature. One link looks promising, but turns out to not be freeware or open source at all. Rather it’s a piece of software that costs about $50, but promises to allow mixing in the moment. Remix any track, the pop-up ad promises. Mix like a master.
He looks around for others, but all roads lead him back to the Master. He smokes some more and pours another drink and sets to looking around for a hacked copy. Some look promising, but none of the torrents work. He looks more closely at the legit website for the program, hoping to find a free trial but seeing no indications of the slightest download option. He scans the FAQ and finds nothing about a trial version of any kind, but the questions and answers (mostly about intellectual property rights, most of the answers suggesting erudite terrains for aural revisionary exploration, a dense catalog for a world he'd only daydreamed of minutes before) only serve to pique his interest further.
He has an odd little feeling purchasing the software, like he's crossed some threshold to bourgeois respectability that he'll struggle fruitlessly and without grace to escape for the rest of his life. The download process takes five minutes, the installer another five. It's after 1 in the morning when he nails down the last of the soundcard settings (slaying an irritating pop, a stuttering beyond the first few seconds of any clip), and it's later still when he figures out how to port the track from his player to his computer and into the program itself.
Are you ready to Mix like a Master? He is. And then it appears; a beautifully-designed, absolutely simple mixing board, with auto-guess labels for each track of the song, each customizable on the off chance that a specific audio track was incorrectly identified by the program’s expert and unprecedented algorithms. The distorted guitars and meandering bass and wander-to-a-click drums go without a fight, as do the lead vocals and the backing vocals and the spectral synths and the well-intended but probably excessive theremin and string section. There's still a little bleed, from an irksome, optimistic egg shaker, but with another hit and some readjusting of the light levels in the room the whispering turns out to be some inscrutable indie shit, words for the sake of sound only, devoid of meaning and never intended to convey a single thing.
He scoops himself a robust bowl of ice cream and loads Dark Side of the Moon, mixing and remixing and isolating and recombining until first light, past the first steps in the hall and the school buses and a guilty Diet Mountain Dew from the fridge, later still when he decides he'd better call out from work.
The trouble followed him up the street and into his apartment, through making dinner and eating standing at the kitchen counter and staring meaninglessly at a book with the player cued unconsciously back and back before declaring it pointless, closing the book, turning out all the lights and dipping back into the track again.
He poured himself a drink, lit mood lights and even smoked a joint: There simply wasn't any understanding what was being whispered from 2:04 to 2:19 in this godforsaken track. He tried changing the equalizer settings and plugging the thing into his stereo with an auxiliary wire, he borrowed better headphones from his neighbors (a little too stoned to venture out, but not so much so that he couldn’t pull it off). Nothing did it. It wasn't an exceptional record, it wasn't anything he'd listened to more than a dozen or so times, but this tucked in corner of this one song would be his defeat or his turning point, his entree into a new world of close attention, of deep listening and an acolyte's awareness, of no longer fail.
There has to be a way to remove some parts of a song in real time. This should be a feature of the format by now, he thinks, that mixing down ceases to be a prerequisite for the transfer to home listening. Rather, every song should be delivered whole, to be mixed listeners in real time. He pictures the whisper isolated and looped by itself or accompanied by the barest spectral synth or TR-808 pulse, and the thrill of deciphering the code. He briefly searches online for software with such a deconstructive feature. One link looks promising, but turns out to not be freeware or open source at all. Rather it’s a piece of software that costs about $50, but promises to allow mixing in the moment. Remix any track, the pop-up ad promises. Mix like a master.
He looks around for others, but all roads lead him back to the Master. He smokes some more and pours another drink and sets to looking around for a hacked copy. Some look promising, but none of the torrents work. He looks more closely at the legit website for the program, hoping to find a free trial but seeing no indications of the slightest download option. He scans the FAQ and finds nothing about a trial version of any kind, but the questions and answers (mostly about intellectual property rights, most of the answers suggesting erudite terrains for aural revisionary exploration, a dense catalog for a world he'd only daydreamed of minutes before) only serve to pique his interest further.
He has an odd little feeling purchasing the software, like he's crossed some threshold to bourgeois respectability that he'll struggle fruitlessly and without grace to escape for the rest of his life. The download process takes five minutes, the installer another five. It's after 1 in the morning when he nails down the last of the soundcard settings (slaying an irritating pop, a stuttering beyond the first few seconds of any clip), and it's later still when he figures out how to port the track from his player to his computer and into the program itself.
Are you ready to Mix like a Master? He is. And then it appears; a beautifully-designed, absolutely simple mixing board, with auto-guess labels for each track of the song, each customizable on the off chance that a specific audio track was incorrectly identified by the program’s expert and unprecedented algorithms. The distorted guitars and meandering bass and wander-to-a-click drums go without a fight, as do the lead vocals and the backing vocals and the spectral synths and the well-intended but probably excessive theremin and string section. There's still a little bleed, from an irksome, optimistic egg shaker, but with another hit and some readjusting of the light levels in the room the whispering turns out to be some inscrutable indie shit, words for the sake of sound only, devoid of meaning and never intended to convey a single thing.
He scoops himself a robust bowl of ice cream and loads Dark Side of the Moon, mixing and remixing and isolating and recombining until first light, past the first steps in the hall and the school buses and a guilty Diet Mountain Dew from the fridge, later still when he decides he'd better call out from work.
9.21.2010
a field of stars
When he decides he'll sleep N. stops settling and exhales sharply and sleeps through to a field of stars in oscillating patterns, in sharpshift constellations of familiar and beloved objects, nightglowoutlines of dump trucks, oversized plastic footballs, omnipotent vacuum cleaners and beach buckets flipped to form brigadier's helmets, ornate, not streamlined but regal, horses and woof woofs and a fuzzy cat and sippy cups of deliciously non-watered down apple juice.
When the firmament shifts or blinks to form each new pattern a collage of melodies in modulating sister keys pans stereowide through the room, where the boat rows and the bongo bongs, where the spider bitsies and Ms. Mary Mack dresses like a Beat Poet in a turtleneck, where old Dan Tucker gets narrowly out the way of the wheels on the bus. Said bus is driven by Raffi and it isn't that he's driving recklessly or drunk or high on cocaine or apple juice or distracted by the tender entreaties of his four best groupie moms; the fault is that of Mr. Tucker and I'd appreciate you refraining from questions about Raffi's character; he is at the very least a genius of arrangement and those are his assistants.
Before N. decides to sleep there are random games to be folded into the eachnight ritual (hide under pillows), rote references to Geneva conventions, surprisingly proactive calls for the changing of diapers, appeals to sleep in other rooms, to go downstairs for water, to just be left alone to sleep, please.
And when you honor that particular request and close the door you only have to count to ten before he's out of bed, over to the light, and when you open the door again his eyes are bright with humor, and of course the parenting manual says you aren't supposed to look him in the eye or laugh yourself at that point but christ, it's funny.
When the firmament shifts or blinks to form each new pattern a collage of melodies in modulating sister keys pans stereowide through the room, where the boat rows and the bongo bongs, where the spider bitsies and Ms. Mary Mack dresses like a Beat Poet in a turtleneck, where old Dan Tucker gets narrowly out the way of the wheels on the bus. Said bus is driven by Raffi and it isn't that he's driving recklessly or drunk or high on cocaine or apple juice or distracted by the tender entreaties of his four best groupie moms; the fault is that of Mr. Tucker and I'd appreciate you refraining from questions about Raffi's character; he is at the very least a genius of arrangement and those are his assistants.
Before N. decides to sleep there are random games to be folded into the eachnight ritual (hide under pillows), rote references to Geneva conventions, surprisingly proactive calls for the changing of diapers, appeals to sleep in other rooms, to go downstairs for water, to just be left alone to sleep, please.
And when you honor that particular request and close the door you only have to count to ten before he's out of bed, over to the light, and when you open the door again his eyes are bright with humor, and of course the parenting manual says you aren't supposed to look him in the eye or laugh yourself at that point but christ, it's funny.
9.08.2010
skrimshander/for the safe passage of another night
At night in this room nightflowers grow from the floors and a canopy of leaves shields from the rain and the crickets repeat pedantic their unerring secret in the vastly reverbified robust sonambulatic wind. We dream each three to our own worlds and do we dream the same or rather as polite dreamneighbors in film-lot primordial thatch huts, our latent thoughts alight as fireflies in the wistful forestsearching eyes of those who came before.
At night in this room: simplicity that gave us the dread slip in the toobright toofrenetic middling day, time and breath and togetherlives and forest not around but animistic through, within our hearts (or if this too goes too-stock then within our souls, or criminy, settle for our beings).
You, little one, when you laterlook at our lives then will you know the dreams we hold each in our hearts now, will the transmitted record seek through to your awakened heart intact as something more than the palest least echo of fire.
You, love, when you look at our lives then will you know how this corpulent muckraking daze held said dreams, how they were known like nothing known the selfsame and however fearful blinking held were held true the same.
You, searchers, see this togetherness parceled safe through the grim malaise of Jerseyed forest, a patch of dying trees huddled together in a newmint waste of parking lot, pray see this love intact and moved unerring to its future point, to be checked in your ancestral ghosts' collective list of return on past investment.
At night in this room: simplicity that gave us the dread slip in the toobright toofrenetic middling day, time and breath and togetherlives and forest not around but animistic through, within our hearts (or if this too goes too-stock then within our souls, or criminy, settle for our beings).
You, little one, when you laterlook at our lives then will you know the dreams we hold each in our hearts now, will the transmitted record seek through to your awakened heart intact as something more than the palest least echo of fire.
You, love, when you look at our lives then will you know how this corpulent muckraking daze held said dreams, how they were known like nothing known the selfsame and however fearful blinking held were held true the same.
You, searchers, see this togetherness parceled safe through the grim malaise of Jerseyed forest, a patch of dying trees huddled together in a newmint waste of parking lot, pray see this love intact and moved unerring to its future point, to be checked in your ancestral ghosts' collective list of return on past investment.
9.06.2010
2010 Eagles Horoscope
Roster Detail:
2 Akers, David, Sagittarius
29 Allen, Nate, Sagittarius
81 Avant, Jason, Taurus (Aries cusp)
51 Barnes, Antwan, Libra
84 Baskett, Hank, Virgo
26 Bell, Mike, Taurus
55 Bradley, Stewart, Scorpio
34 Buckley, Eldra, Cancer
97 Bunkley, Brodrick, Sagittarius
38 Calvin, Jorrick, Cancer
87 Celek, Brent, Aquarius
49 Chaney, Jamar, Libra
57 Clayton, Keenan, Gemini
59 Cole, Nick, Leo
58 Cole, Trent, Libra
42 Coleman, Kurt, Cancer
14 Cooper, Riley, Virgo
90 Dixon, Antonio, Cancer
46 Dorenbos, Jon, Cancer
65 Dunlap, King, Virgo
53 Fokou, Moise, Virgo
96 Gaither, Omar, Pisces
54 Graham, Brandon, Aries
21 Hanson, Joselio, Leo
82 Harbor, Clay, Cancer
79 Herremans, Todd, Libra
31 Hobbs, Ellis, Taurus
68 Howard, Austin, Aries
10 Jackson, DeSean, Sagittarius
67 Jackson, Jamaal, Taurus
62 Jean-Gilles, Max, Scorpio
56 Jordan, Akeem, Leo
74 Justice, Winston, Virgo
3 Kafka, Mike, Leo
4 Kolb, Kevin, Virgo
93 Laws, Trevor, Gemini
35 Lindley, Trevard, Aquarius
18 Maclin, Jeremy, Taurus
25 McCoy, LeSean, Cancer
77 McGlynn, Mike, Pisces
27 Mikell, Quintin, Virgo
75 Parker, Juqua, Taurus
23 Patterson, Dimitri, Gemini
98 Patterson, Mike, Virgo
71 Peters, Jason, Aquarius
6 Rocca, Sav, Scorpio
22 Samuel, Asante, Capricorn
50 Sims, Ernie, Capricorn
91 Tapp, Darryl, Virgo
52 Te'o-Nesheim, Daniel, Gemini
7 Vick, Michael, Cancer
43 Weaver, Leonard, Libra (Virgo cusp)
76 Wells, Reggie, Scorpio
Highlights: 10 Virgos, 8 Cancers, 6 Tauruses.
T. Everett Shrubkin's prediction: 11-5; Super Bowl Champions.
2 Akers, David, Sagittarius
29 Allen, Nate, Sagittarius
81 Avant, Jason, Taurus (Aries cusp)
51 Barnes, Antwan, Libra
84 Baskett, Hank, Virgo
26 Bell, Mike, Taurus
55 Bradley, Stewart, Scorpio
34 Buckley, Eldra, Cancer
97 Bunkley, Brodrick, Sagittarius
38 Calvin, Jorrick, Cancer
87 Celek, Brent, Aquarius
49 Chaney, Jamar, Libra
57 Clayton, Keenan, Gemini
59 Cole, Nick, Leo
58 Cole, Trent, Libra
42 Coleman, Kurt, Cancer
14 Cooper, Riley, Virgo
90 Dixon, Antonio, Cancer
46 Dorenbos, Jon, Cancer
65 Dunlap, King, Virgo
53 Fokou, Moise, Virgo
96 Gaither, Omar, Pisces
54 Graham, Brandon, Aries
21 Hanson, Joselio, Leo
82 Harbor, Clay, Cancer
79 Herremans, Todd, Libra
31 Hobbs, Ellis, Taurus
68 Howard, Austin, Aries
10 Jackson, DeSean, Sagittarius
67 Jackson, Jamaal, Taurus
62 Jean-Gilles, Max, Scorpio
56 Jordan, Akeem, Leo
74 Justice, Winston, Virgo
3 Kafka, Mike, Leo
4 Kolb, Kevin, Virgo
93 Laws, Trevor, Gemini
35 Lindley, Trevard, Aquarius
18 Maclin, Jeremy, Taurus
25 McCoy, LeSean, Cancer
77 McGlynn, Mike, Pisces
27 Mikell, Quintin, Virgo
75 Parker, Juqua, Taurus
23 Patterson, Dimitri, Gemini
98 Patterson, Mike, Virgo
71 Peters, Jason, Aquarius
6 Rocca, Sav, Scorpio
22 Samuel, Asante, Capricorn
50 Sims, Ernie, Capricorn
91 Tapp, Darryl, Virgo
52 Te'o-Nesheim, Daniel, Gemini
7 Vick, Michael, Cancer
43 Weaver, Leonard, Libra (Virgo cusp)
76 Wells, Reggie, Scorpio
Highlights: 10 Virgos, 8 Cancers, 6 Tauruses.
T. Everett Shrubkin's prediction: 11-5; Super Bowl Champions.
9.05.2010
the empty page
The empty page is future snow, densely layered cloud. A sun-flash around a curve. Dozing off face down in your own personal mountain of cocaine.
The empty page is the bottom of the pile on fourth down in a jovial but in all respects earnest pickup game at a Klan rally. The bullet's flash, the sudden crash, the light you go to and are pushed to at first sight. A microscope awaiting chance paramecia, a room waiting to catch fire.
Cauterized memory, the names of people forgotten, promises unkept, the list of lies that never came to light, wasted time or future time, that same snowfield as one to be traversed in an ill-advised quest for meaning still probably best to pursue.
Fuck the empty page, the empty page is fear, paralysis, silence chosen to avoid risk. Filler to deceive a reader re> gravity. Dull death, dull, absent death and a delicious absence of pain or confusion that for chrissakes you totally miss out on.
The empty page is an aerial or closeup of the human soul, a flag of no country. Everybody gathers in front of it and sings their own made-up anthem (at least in compatible keys, more Boccaccio or Bacchus than Babel), then everybody gets stoned if they smoke or drunk if they drink or drinks seltzer if neither and promises to never watch the news or read the paper again. And they all live happily ever after.
The empty page is silence between the notes of Art Tatum phrasing, or the first tentative declarations of love. Preamble to sweetness, honey, and light. The moment she leaves in the morning and before she returns, and a white down fall comforter.
The empty page is the bottom of the pile on fourth down in a jovial but in all respects earnest pickup game at a Klan rally. The bullet's flash, the sudden crash, the light you go to and are pushed to at first sight. A microscope awaiting chance paramecia, a room waiting to catch fire.
Cauterized memory, the names of people forgotten, promises unkept, the list of lies that never came to light, wasted time or future time, that same snowfield as one to be traversed in an ill-advised quest for meaning still probably best to pursue.
Fuck the empty page, the empty page is fear, paralysis, silence chosen to avoid risk. Filler to deceive a reader re> gravity. Dull death, dull, absent death and a delicious absence of pain or confusion that for chrissakes you totally miss out on.
The empty page is an aerial or closeup of the human soul, a flag of no country. Everybody gathers in front of it and sings their own made-up anthem (at least in compatible keys, more Boccaccio or Bacchus than Babel), then everybody gets stoned if they smoke or drunk if they drink or drinks seltzer if neither and promises to never watch the news or read the paper again. And they all live happily ever after.
The empty page is silence between the notes of Art Tatum phrasing, or the first tentative declarations of love. Preamble to sweetness, honey, and light. The moment she leaves in the morning and before she returns, and a white down fall comforter.
9.03.2010
cenicero
You can setup drums in the basement should be New Jersey's state motto. Including the ellipsis and delivered by the official mascot.
The official mascot is a cartoon goldfinch with half-baked eyes, a full complement of sticks and brushes and a jean jacket with an illegible band patch. The official mascot's name is Max Finch. He's a fun one, at first, a real presence but after a couple days crashing on your couch he starts pawning every non-percussive item in your house to buy newer and better pieces for his kit. And he never remembers your name.
Tonight where we are there are drums in the basement. When I get to the house N. is eating noodles with cheese but discards that process and insists that we go and play.
The ellipsis in the new state motto is less a grammatical cop out, more a promise. The promise that if you move to New Jersey and setup drums in the basement, no evil will befall you and your spirit will loose from its shackles to become one with time. If New Jersey really is in danger of losing its millionaires, let them be replaced by two-year old drummers.
Q: What are drums like?
A: Drums are like horses and ice cream and TV on and noodles and books and Grandpa and friends and soccer balls and footballs and baseball bats and Grandma when it is dark it is time to notice and when it is light it's time to play and there are Mommy and Daddy and people and friends and there is chocolate ice cream play drums.
Max's tattoos:
a) cracked skull with eye sockets beset by hummingbirds;
b) lightning striking a man head-on; the man is stoked;
c) diagrams of drum-mic positioning (7).
What N. lacks at present in formal prowess he makes up for in fire. And in vision. He sees drums as they are, without a preconceived sense of which pieces to play when or in what combination, without an overriding sense of 4/4 guiding him. He is more of an off-road truck than a reliable train, and friends, I tell you, tonight New Jersey is a beautiful state.
The official mascot is a cartoon goldfinch with half-baked eyes, a full complement of sticks and brushes and a jean jacket with an illegible band patch. The official mascot's name is Max Finch. He's a fun one, at first, a real presence but after a couple days crashing on your couch he starts pawning every non-percussive item in your house to buy newer and better pieces for his kit. And he never remembers your name.
Tonight where we are there are drums in the basement. When I get to the house N. is eating noodles with cheese but discards that process and insists that we go and play.
The ellipsis in the new state motto is less a grammatical cop out, more a promise. The promise that if you move to New Jersey and setup drums in the basement, no evil will befall you and your spirit will loose from its shackles to become one with time. If New Jersey really is in danger of losing its millionaires, let them be replaced by two-year old drummers.
Q: What are drums like?
A: Drums are like horses and ice cream and TV on and noodles and books and Grandpa and friends and soccer balls and footballs and baseball bats and Grandma when it is dark it is time to notice and when it is light it's time to play and there are Mommy and Daddy and people and friends and there is chocolate ice cream play drums.
Max's tattoos:
a) cracked skull with eye sockets beset by hummingbirds;
b) lightning striking a man head-on; the man is stoked;
c) diagrams of drum-mic positioning (7).
What N. lacks at present in formal prowess he makes up for in fire. And in vision. He sees drums as they are, without a preconceived sense of which pieces to play when or in what combination, without an overriding sense of 4/4 guiding him. He is more of an off-road truck than a reliable train, and friends, I tell you, tonight New Jersey is a beautiful state.
we are travelers
Out early to mow the lawn, hedge the sides along the house, prune the indomitable rose bushes where they encroach full on the sidewalk, social as they are, wanting contact. The air is full of moisture, the morning gray and damp and half-lit, still redolent of summer but with the first susurrating pretense of wind, with headstart falling leaves a fine example to their brethren, inspiring the eternal corps of potential yardwork.
In the car (the still-new 1997 Buick, the first plank in a meticulous middle age custom coffin, time still to get it right) the same improv tape that I couldn't get all that into from 1995 the other day now seems golden.
The guitar is discordant and steady, and someone who doesn't know how to play the violin is making that work, steady tritone and minor 2nd marcato bowing and a naive Casiotone keyboard trying to color the proceedings with warm, humorous tones, like a guy handing out candy bars at a burial. This moment from 1995 and my moment now make sense together; this layer of the past and the present align cleanly and in concord. The wish is just for a drummer to fix it but none arrives.
At the bus stop now and wind out on the edge of a storm (thinking of the hurricane offshore, but the air comes from the north) is forcing waves of cool air across the parking lot, changing the tone of the morning and heralding real fall. Storm sentinels bringing a feeling that everybody in this Greyhound line shares, a kind of poetry thrown into the dull everyday. Will we rise? Indeed, we are travelers, we are lords of the road, we are north to the great city.
In the car (the still-new 1997 Buick, the first plank in a meticulous middle age custom coffin, time still to get it right) the same improv tape that I couldn't get all that into from 1995 the other day now seems golden.
The guitar is discordant and steady, and someone who doesn't know how to play the violin is making that work, steady tritone and minor 2nd marcato bowing and a naive Casiotone keyboard trying to color the proceedings with warm, humorous tones, like a guy handing out candy bars at a burial. This moment from 1995 and my moment now make sense together; this layer of the past and the present align cleanly and in concord. The wish is just for a drummer to fix it but none arrives.
At the bus stop now and wind out on the edge of a storm (thinking of the hurricane offshore, but the air comes from the north) is forcing waves of cool air across the parking lot, changing the tone of the morning and heralding real fall. Storm sentinels bringing a feeling that everybody in this Greyhound line shares, a kind of poetry thrown into the dull everyday. Will we rise? Indeed, we are travelers, we are lords of the road, we are north to the great city.
9.01.2010
spirited away
She's still with us, still with us in spirit. Despite the fact that their bus went off a cliff, I know those school kids are still playing hopscotch somewhere. That disease or the mainstream media may have ravaged his mind but they couldn't take away his soul, he's still looking out for us, etc.
When this sort of jazz gets said (always at funerals, always everyone at their most open and sorrowful and needing) it sounds to my heart like a well meaning but ultimately ineffective or inaccurate salve, a kind of polite quack remedy. Deep down (particularly if those saying it aren't terribly religious, or ascribe little in a concept of afterlife) you can tell that very often the people saying it don't mean it themselves. The caring piece, of people looking out for each other in low moments, in moments when the shared script of trying and reward is most questioned, comes across, and helps. But that shared lie also strikes a hollow and deflating chord, just when that certainty that nothing is ever really created ex nihilis and therefore nothing ever really returns to it would help the most.
I'm not sure why I'm so rooted in skepticism at those moments, though. Because there are times that the people we love who've passed away are as close as ever. Times I can feel the spirits of our ancestors keeping careful watch, including people I'm sure we've never met, and including too the people that we miss the most. It's something felt and intuited; something I know to be as real as anything else I know. Something known in the way a melody comes to mind on a sad day, to let me know everything will be okay; in the way that for the most part things hold together in our shared lives, that more times than not it seems like someone has sprinkled good luck to hold the stray, errant, or potentially fatal pieces in place, to stave off full disaster for another day.
The world has more magic than we'll ever know, but certainly less than we need it to, on a given day. This skeptic/dualist balance-- knowing deep down and full well that one of two things that I know for sure absolutely can't be true, and still believing both on an as needed basis-- feels rather grown up and rather primitive all at once.
When this sort of jazz gets said (always at funerals, always everyone at their most open and sorrowful and needing) it sounds to my heart like a well meaning but ultimately ineffective or inaccurate salve, a kind of polite quack remedy. Deep down (particularly if those saying it aren't terribly religious, or ascribe little in a concept of afterlife) you can tell that very often the people saying it don't mean it themselves. The caring piece, of people looking out for each other in low moments, in moments when the shared script of trying and reward is most questioned, comes across, and helps. But that shared lie also strikes a hollow and deflating chord, just when that certainty that nothing is ever really created ex nihilis and therefore nothing ever really returns to it would help the most.
I'm not sure why I'm so rooted in skepticism at those moments, though. Because there are times that the people we love who've passed away are as close as ever. Times I can feel the spirits of our ancestors keeping careful watch, including people I'm sure we've never met, and including too the people that we miss the most. It's something felt and intuited; something I know to be as real as anything else I know. Something known in the way a melody comes to mind on a sad day, to let me know everything will be okay; in the way that for the most part things hold together in our shared lives, that more times than not it seems like someone has sprinkled good luck to hold the stray, errant, or potentially fatal pieces in place, to stave off full disaster for another day.
The world has more magic than we'll ever know, but certainly less than we need it to, on a given day. This skeptic/dualist balance-- knowing deep down and full well that one of two things that I know for sure absolutely can't be true, and still believing both on an as needed basis-- feels rather grown up and rather primitive all at once.
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