Graffiti Space

Religious Texts in Hinduism and Judaism

2012-01-02T12:18:00.002-07:00

Central to the religions of Hinduism and Judaism are texts that have become sacred within the confines of each religious practice. The Rig-Vedas and the Upanishads are regarded as two of the most important documents in Hinduism. Similarly, the Tanakh in Judaism is a compilation of texts that provide a fundamental basis for the Jewish religion. The importance of the written word in these three texts to their respective religions and the culture of their adherents, is paramount to the history, perseverance, and future of both religions.

The importance of the Rig-Vedas in Hinduism which literally means “the Veda of verse and praise” is significant in that the hymns and poems contained within are one of the first examples of a culture that preserved its accumulated knowledge by recording it in words. These texts in the form of written words were first recorded from about 1500 B.C.E. to 400 C.E. and are still recited by Hindu priests and worshippers in the present age. As one text out of a four part collection of works called the Vedas, the Rig-Vedas as an ancient document have come to function as a fundamental grounding in the spiritual nature of the Hindu concept of Brahman. Through history and repetition of the written words within, these hymns and poems to various Hindu gods symbolize the all encompassing nature of Brahman in that the materialism of the world is an illusion (maya) and the spiritual reality of Brahman is everything and the only truth that exists.

The Upanishads furthers the interpretation of Brahman by documenting the concept of a supreme reality from which all other reality exists, and that Brahman is totality, eternal, infinite, and unknowable to the human mind. The work details the structure of Brahman by establishing that ananda (utter bliss), sat (reality itself), and chit (pure consciousness) are pieces of the whole nature of reality. Literally translated as, “to sit near by” the phrase is meant to allude to a spiritual teacher instructing a pupil on the floor. The Upanishads function as a philosophical volume that relies upon written text to store and teach knowledge in Hinduism.

In Judaism, the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible is a historical text that documents the history and plight of the Jewish people. Also recorded within are covenants or contracts that serve as a pact with God that as William Young states, “sometimes the covenant is a promise made by God; on other occasions the covenant includes specific stipulations for the people of Israel to follow”. Time in the written works of Judaism and all Abrahamic religions, is linear and firmly established in a rational way that puts special importance on humanity’s role as a force to shape and create history. The Tanakh is a foundation that has been written down over time to preserve the ideas, philosophies, covenants, and history of Judaism for future study and reference.

The overall belief structure of Hinduism and Judaism contrast sharply when looked at on a large scale. The polytheistic nature of Hinduism compared with a monotheistic Judaism. Beyond the obvious differences in religious practice and philosophy, the two belief systems share a commonality when the written word is taken into account as a means to store information. Both religions have used the medium of writing to document the history and structure of religious practices throughout the ages. However, the Rig-Vedas, Upanishads, and Tanakh contrast in regard to their respective contents and views of reality. In the Hindu texts, the focus is on a spiritual reality that is all encompassing and unknowable to human capacity. As the one and only truth that exists, Brahman is everything as well as a spiritual reality that functions as an impersonal force that unifies everything known and unknown. It is human attachment and ignorance to the spiritual that causes a perceived separation in reality and perpetual illusions that are interpreted through the filter of a human mind. Of course, this warped human sense of reality is contained inside the spiritual reality of everything as well. Ultimately the spiritual nature of the content of these Hindu concepts are recorded in written form for reference and study. In the Jewish view of reality, the Tanakh and the contracts contained within are a more physical and material way of experiencing human reality. When contrasted with the texts of Hinduism, the Jewish reality is one of history, time scales (as in beginnings and endings) and the Hebrew God (Yahweh) existing beyond and outside human reality. Jews adhere to their traditions through the fundamental interpretation of the Tanakh in a material and literal sense of histories and covenants. Potentially enlightened Hindus eventually come to know reality in a spiritual sense that has no boundaries or separation in human existence with multiple gods. Everything is Brahman; gods and humans exist within Brahman through a spiritual perspective. The commonality in the two religions is the written word as documentation, but each faith uses their recorded writings in starkly different ways of interpretation and execution.

Possible problems to these contrasts, could include the notion of the written word as being essentially the same in both religions in its function as language that is used to communicate the philosophies of each practice. While this is most certainly true, language in the form of writing in this sense, is a means or way of communicating vastly different concepts. This is secondary to the information contained within the structure of human communication through the knowledge that is imbued in these diverse religious texts.

The Rig-Vedas and Upanishads offer religious knowledge in the form of poems, hymns, and detailed explanations of the spiritual reality of Brahman. All are important facets to the Hindu religion, and all exist in knowledge as language in written communication. The Tanakh is similar in its use of writing to establish and explain concepts within the religion. It differs from its Hindu counterpart, in its establishment of a material rather than spiritual reality. That is to say that, the Jewish God lies outside of human reality and historical events in Jewish history are of special importance to the human role in shaping the religion. All three religious texts are essential and influential to the establishment and continuing faith of their parent religions.

Purgatory - A Short Story

2011-12-18T13:27:00.025-07:00

“Diane, all I’m saying is, I need you to be a little more likable.”

“Wait, what?”

“Likeable. You know what I mean. Everyone knows what I mean. I don’t know how many times today I’ve heard you talking to clients with that attitude of yours. That curt, robotic attitude talk. It’s getting a little old around here and I just–”

“Ya know, I don’t know what you mean! I do my job well and treat people with respect. And if you want me to start acting like a bubbly air headed–”

“That is not what I’m saying. You know–”

“It’s called professionalism Don! And I–”

“Okay, okay. Diane, please. Just calm down and listen for a second. Okay?”

She turned her head the other way, huffed, clicked her tongue and screwed her face into a middle aged vice grip that was becoming a familiar feeling. She knew it. She knew if she could see herself now from a distance of 25 years ago, she would be repulsed.

Diane turned back, crossed her arms and waited.

“Alright, all I’m asking is for you to be a little more friendly with people. Okay? I’m not trying to attack your professionalism or anything, I just need you to make an extra effort here.”

A few seconds of tense quiet. They were locked in a stare. One of pitying aggressiveness and the other of contempt. She barely heard him speak.

“Look, no one is doubting the job you do. You’re the best office manager we’ve had in years, but with that comes a degree of affability with people. Okay? And instead of barking platitudes to not only our clients, but to your own coworkers – can you just add a little human touch to things? Hmm? It’s a big part of being professional. In this day and age people don’t want to walk into an office that’s run by a drill sergeant, they want a comforting experience, especially our clients. People have enough negativity in their lives, alright? They don’t need more of it in the workplace, they don’t need it period. And I’m not asking you to baby people, I’m just asking you to be, well, nicer. That’s it. Okay? Can you just put a little more feeling in your work, a little more smile? Life’s too short, ya know. It’s too short to be, uh, angry or whatever have you. I’m not saying you’re angry, I’m just saying even if you are, you could, uh well, benefit from a lighter approach that, well, I think you know what I’m saying.”

He left while she was in the ladies room. At the sink she heard his cell ring and keys jangling as he walked down the hallway passing. In the mirror she smirked and frowned; typical corporate cocksucker. He saw the exit opportunity and acted.

Back at the reception desk she rolled the phones to the night assistant and started to organize client payment plans that had been filled out over the last week or so. Afternoon sun was blazing through the window. The time change felt odd, like she was late for something. She worked faster. She wanted to be away from this place. Roger would probably be home before her and start dinner. Potatoes and chicken, or tuna salad sandwiches with corn or something. Can’t cook for shit. Didn’t matter, his kid would eat anything just like any 16 year-old boy should. She knew he was a mostly decent father if nothing else. He tried to have somewhat of a relationship with the kid no matter what would be spit back in his face – resilience, he did have. Diane loved him for this. For the energy he brought to the household, the attitude of impervious will when things weren’t right, the bullet riddled sheen of his demeanor that he wore with hard earned wisdom. In ways she was envious.

Finished, checked her email a last time and proceeded to shut down the computer. Grabbed her purse and took out her cell, checked for messages and turned the ringer back on. Diane cleaned off her desk, got up and made sure the filing cabinets were locked. She was pretty sure she was the last one there but wanted to check the office anyway. She started walking down the main hallway while reading a text from Roger, “be home late tonite luv u.” As she turned a corner her arm caught the edge of a framed picture knocking it off the wall. “Shit.” The glass shattered when it hit the floor. For a few seconds she just stared at it and wondered what to do. The thing definitely didn’t warrant saving. The sort of exceptionally generalized scene of tranquility that populates office-scapes across America. Country hills with birds and trees, in soft and light pastels with a gold lined border, a brass frame, and semi-opaque frosted glass. It’s purpose was to take up wall space and not to be looked at for more than a few passing seconds, in fact, this was the longest time she had ever looked at it. She took her blazer off, threw it on a chair and pulled her hair back while she walked toward the bathroom for some paper towels. Rolling up her sleeves, she started picking the large chunks of glass out of the carpet and what was left of the frame. It had to be fixed she thought. She would pay for it and have it back here by Monday. It had to be done and she would take care of it.

Regular customers called him Khan and he hated it. A joke, a compliment, a pejorative, didn’t matter because his broad smile and business sense said it was okay. Sometimes he played along telling people that he used to be a wrestler in Ulaanbaatar and “could fuck many people’s shit up.” This would always make ‘em laugh or smile or want to start another conversation about how they too wrestled back in the service or high school, and he would usually nod and pray for it to end with another customer coming up to the counter. They had no idea.

The electronic door chime rang, he turned away from the game on TV and said, “hello” to the newbies walking in. Saying nothing they walked past him and looked. Back to the game, the announcer’s voices mixed with the chatter of the boys in the isle. On a chair, arms crossed he looked from the corner of his eyes. He could tell they were making fun of him and his accent. Dumb-asses. Moronic dumb-asses. He thought, Speak three and a half languages, can write in three entirely different alphabets, and they make fun of my accent. No idea. Everything given to them. Watched and listened. Eyes shifting back and forth from the game to the dumb-asses to the camera monitor above the cigarette racks to the convex mirror in the corner by the coolers. Door chime, the front door; Hector came up to the counter.

“Que pasa amigo?”

“Ah you know. Tired.”

“Ah yes, but Friday it is my friend.”

Kahn reached up and grabbed a pack of Camels, turned and took a pint of Ancient Age off the shelf.

“Nothing but shit.” Hector shook his head while fishing money from his pocket. “Gotta work tomorrow and Sunday. Never, never ends.”

“Pinche vatos.” He collected the bills and change. Put everything in a bag, smiled and said, “you have your Friday night at least amigo. They have not yet taken this away.”

“They try. So far I’ve been able to say no, but with things as they are, who knows how long I ought to keep that up. Oh, and it’s better to say ‘gabacho’ my friend, Mr. Khan.”

He laughed hard. Little closer to three and a half and another half of a language. “Gracias! And take care buddy.”

Hector waved. “Yep.”

He was suspicious. The dumb-asses were standing a little too close together in an isle that he couldn’t quite see. Whispers, laughs, frequently punctuated by “dude” and “fuck,” they looked intently between the shelves and him. He thought of the baseball bat and unregistered pistol under the counter. He thought of hurting them if they tried to steal or hold the store up. It’d happened before and he knew what to do. He watched.

“Help you two find anything?”

They both looked up. Looked at him for a few long seconds and one of them said, “nah, we good.”

Dip-shits. Get the fuck outta my store. Go back to your silver spoon fed lives. He sighed, crossed his arms and turned his eyes back to the game and began to think of his lawn. It had come close to 90 today and he knew his yard had been taking a beating all day. Ever since Vince quit three and a half weeks ago, Khan had been pulling double shifts, and not surprisingly the long monotonous hours had led his mind into places well worn and places that were just about off the map. He knew that even though he’d watered in the morning, he’d have to water tonight as well when he got home around one o’clock. It’d be hard because he was already tired enough to sleep for a few days, but his lawn depended on it, not to mention his reputation on the block as some kind of Asian yard master of feng shui that his liked and not so liked neighbors had bestowed upon him. He dreamed of a sprinkler system. He began to think ‘if only’ thoughts of programmable stations, vari-speed heads, underground soaker hoses; all presumably visiting his synapses from his lawnmaintence.com wish list. All this while basketball was being played and kids were stealing from him.

Khan took out a pair of glasses and a cigarette from his shirt pocket and began to stare. He lit it and slammed the lighter onto the counter in a way that shouted clearly and aggressively that he was not to be fucked with. The two looked up and saw a middle aged, pudgy Mongolian with a round sweat shined head glaring at them through a fog of smoke emanating from wide nostrils. Confusion for a few seconds turned to giggles and smirks. White boys. Without interrupting his stare he stood up from the bar stool and fumbled his right hand underneath the counter for the pistol. Take something! Give me a reason. He wouldn’t kill because he knew there were the so called, “fates worse than death.” A bullet shattered kneecap, paralysis, the blasting of genitals off, and maybe while they suffered on the floor he would lock and bar the front door, run to the back, get the gas can on top of the emergency generator and the fire extinguisher next to it, run back, douse ‘em and flick his cigarette into the puddle of gasoline and blood. Just like the Hollywood movies. And then of course he’d spray the fire retardant so they wouldn’t die and wait for the cops to take him downtown where he’d gleefully confess. Try me. Do it. He clicked off the safety and felt for the trigger. Do it.

She had cut her hand pretty good. Right in the center of the palm and by the time it was noticed Diane was already on the road. Blood on the steering wheel, keys, stick shift, blouse. So wrapped up in everything, she hadn’t felt a pain until she saw her face with a few strands of hair caked into a mix of blood and makeup on her forehead and right temple. She reached for some kleenexes to wipe her face and eventually found the source. She wadded up the tissues into the core of a tight fist.

She drove erratic, like she had almost nothing to lose. Now the pain was intense. She breathed like she couldn’t get enough air, she was sweating, losing blood, and felt like it. She rummaged through her bloodied purse for cigarettes and a lighter while halfway navigating the road. The late afternoon sun was at a position of maximum intensity and annoyance that obscured the view through a pitted and dirty windshield. Inhaling the smoke calmed and satisfied her in the same way that eating after a prolonged hunger feels. Her hand didn’t throb as hard and she stopped caring about the bleeding. Driving down the road in an old rundown part of town, she passed liquor stores, pawn shops, ethnic restaurants, and read signs advertising programs for inner city youth at risk, lawyers with corny nicknames in parentheses, and property hocking realtors that dangled dreamy promises to the gullible impoverished masses below. The sun had finally set and city lights were sporadically turning on. Diane rolled down her window and felt the evening air. She came to a red light where there was a man holding a cardboard sign that read, “Spaceship broken. Need money for parts. Anything helps. God Bless.” She smirked and marveled at the homeless man’s joke. They made eye contact. She turned away and felt for some change in her purse. Found a quarter and turned back to the bum and saw that he was still staring at her. She flipped the coin in his direction and it hit the sidewalk in front of him. He nodded his thanks and slowly bent down to pick it up. Light turned green, she put it in first, and flicked her cigarette out the window.

Her car felt like a purgatory. The necessary middle ground between destinations that was completely neutral. It was her sanctuary of reflection and pause. Within her protected vehicle of neutrality, she embraced the dirty and eclectic city around her. Pushing through it all like a cultural drill bit. A parade going by in all directions. She was not at ease. She needed a drink. Rather, she wanted a drink but knew that she shouldn’t tempt her desire. The struggles of yesteryear came to a head. She was born with it. It was part of her. Knew it well, and knew that her younger naïve self was genuinely happier when the longing desire was satisfied. It made her smile. She would dance in sweaty morasses of sensuality and light to pulsing rhythms until dawn. Drink herself into a painless body that the endless ecstasy and sex couldn’t hurt anymore. In corners of doorways with the shaft of a pen and a broken light bulb. A bump in the bathroom stall. Stamps and pills on her tongue. All of it a lifetime ago. The hard truth that she had been happier navigating the ride into mysterious territory and letting the reigns go. The manic flights of energy and bliss shot so high that she wouldn’t feel the eventual gravity of Earth and body pulling her back. Down and past the point of origin until she found herself docile, yet angry with a glass of mid-grade cabernet and a television. Once she admitted that her unbreakable vessel was far from the stronghold she’d always imagined, Diane handed over the keys to empirical wisdom and sitting groups of weary types in circles.

She saw the illuminated red sign that said, Liquor. Pulled into the rutted out parking lot and turned off the car. She sat in the muffled noise of the city and waited. Not in thought, but in a catatonic state of worn out monotony and disgust.

The Russians had always been the lesser of two evils. They had imposed their language and political ideologies into the general zeitgeist of a soft, post-war generation. And this was just the way things were to the young. Long enough to seem natural, yet to the elders, it was recent enough to remember the uncertain joys of independence from China while simultaneously retreating to the refuge of the Soviet bloc. Once older, he remembered feeling small. A small human insect wedged between two bloated giants. When the Sino-Soviet split climaxed, Khan in secondary school, became one of the many young nationalists that exploited and used the opportunity between their quarrelsome gatekeepers to further a renewed Mongolian national character. They were The Young Turks of their sparsely populated land. He pushed the notion of political independence and cultural identity as far as his comrades would let a spry young man attain. He remembered feeling a certain winner’s pride from witnessing a turnaround in people to genuine hope. It was fleeting, but good. Something that could never be taken away. Then Nixon started grooming Mao, and he and his formerly strong countrymen felt betrayed by the West. Like a discarded item in a pawn shop selling far below any kind of value, it all decayed into whimsical hubris. The California of his Hollywood dreams had exchanged him for new photo ops and a posturing political dog show. Even worse, when the 1980s became the newest theatre of Cold War tension, the West never even acknowledged Mongolia as part of the oppressed bloc. It was all Eastern Europe and the plights of Slavs, Hungarians, Romanians. In fact, Khan came to believe that America’s view of the “East” abruptly stopped somewhere in the longitudes of the Ukrainian wheat fields. His homeland of nomadic warriors of the Asian Steppe and former global empire, became circus style wrestling matches and weekend horse archer’s tournaments. He was angry. And his anger carried him through his young adulthood as he continued to fight the good fight as a defiant and then ostracized police officer, to later finishing his academic studies to practice law. Gradually the weathering of age, family, and wisdom dulled his vitality and found himself settling for a variety of acceptance. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the lawlessness that ensued, he cashed in and bought his way to the West. Yet, the America of his adolescence did not exist. He thought that, it too had become worn with age and abuse. A crabby king that wielded intense power, and grand illusions. No longer a lawyer, Khan became a cab driver, a dry cleaning technician, an Asian and Mexican line cook, and finally a liquor store owner. He now lived in the middle latitudes, middle age, and middle ground. A veteran of experience; he had adjusted accordingly.

She thought of the broken picture, the glass, then Roger and decided she didn’t care. He’d be worried later. Worried that something might’ve happened to her. He would ponder things and wait. Make her dinner and wait. Watch the game, read the paper, check his email, and wait. Eventually he might call the police. He was efficient like that. Responsible. An operator might tell him that he had to wait 48 hours in order to file a missing person report and he would dutifully raise hell. An abduction, a suicide made to look like an accident, a tragic murder, a disappearance. She sat in the middle of her thinking. She knew something. She was scared. It swept over her entire body. Fear of nothing – no thing, non thing. Without. None. Non-. Nowhere in empty space. Nonexistence. Nothing.

The boys had pocketed one 750ml bottle of Vodka each into their enormous baggy trousers. This is what he saw. He felt his jaw tighten. His thoughts, his life; all racing to somewhere. They were re-stoned after having just woken from a long afternoon’s couch coma with what remained of the half empty bags of Cheetos on their chests and diverse gamer apparatus strewn about. Black hoodies, bloodshot eyes, and fluorescent crumbs on their exterior, he saw them as perfect representatives of a certain kind of stereotypical American teenager. Normally he would silently laugh and admire the vapid stupidity and arrogance of these kids. But now they were stealing things that belonged to him. Taking things that weren’t given to them. They had been born with everything and raised in utter banality, and now they sought relief in petty crime. He knew this as he watched them in his store. Sweat was running down into his eyes while he exhaled miniature clouds of tobacco smoke that rose to the ceiling. He slowly pulled the gun out from under the counter and waited with an intensity. The sounds of the air conditioner and television commercials. Heart was hitting hard, while his hands and arms met to aim the pistol. He focused through one eye and lined up the sight – right in the middle. One boy looked up in the direction of the gun pointing liquor store clerk. His mouth opened. He went pale and now truly looked like a child. Then the other. And dumbfounded by fear, the first kid started to say something when the door chime rang, cutting him off.

End

Shameless Plug: If you liked this story, you might also like an earlier one I did found here. If not, you'd probably hate it more, and then wonder why you're reading this shit.

KWA

2011-02-10T18:45:00.006-07:00

Like the brave Dadaists of yesteryear, KWA sculpts and experiments with modern media to express his artistic and political philosophies. In fact, KWA’s commonality with Dada is, art as a kind of anti-art. In more words, a defiant affirmation of originality often posed as a question, in so being that the artistic tools used for creation are traditional, but the context in which the work is placed gives the idea of the art in question a new and sometimes unique meaning. In this way, the art of KWA resembles the visual work of Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. In the case of Duchamp, works were created with found objects like a urinal or bicycle wheel. Likewise, KWA employs the mediums of modern media to communicate his critiques of certain media and philosophies. Both in his samples of orations by speakers and the ambient soundscapes that were created with everyday vehicles of transmission i.e. frequencies used in satellite, radio, and television communications. In the case of Warhol, the means and idea of the artwork are the art, not the work itself. In the way that Warhol evoked the commodification of art by commodifying his art, KWA communicates his work through the same vessels that the propagandists he opposes are communicated through i.e. the internet, CDs, Mp3s, speakers, stereos. All this of course, lends itself to be simultaneously analyzed, experienced, and judged by the listener in which the work is presented.

“Neurillogikal” serves as a general introduction to what the next 55 minutes will sonically contain. Droning low frequencies mixed with higher band sounds that swirl and oscillate within the stereo spectrum. The combined effect is like that of a Rothko painting, where shapes and colors, blend and fade into a cohesive and unified whole. Here, the blurry drone rotates, while crisp higher pitched sounds move in outer revolutions about a listener’s center. This track is a sound collage that has a sinister yet meditative effect, that perhaps alludes to the passivity needed on the part of the television viewer to effectively be communicated to. As a title, “Neurillogikal” is a curious portmanteau that implies divergent meanings within itself; neuro, as in relation to the brain, logic, illogic, illness, and a protrusive “k” used in the same hardline Germanic way that Kafka applied it.

As “Neurillogikal” tempers the listener’s senses, “AldouHux” rides within the same auditory channels as its predecessor, albeit with some added samples of humans speaking. In fact, the two pieces work in the same fashion that the latter’s namesake wrote of in Brave New World. Recall that, Aldous Huxley portrayed a utopian society that existed in passive happiness. The indoctrinated (Huxley termed it, hypnopaedically conditioned) population sought the dumbed-down passivity required to live, because life without passivity was no life to live. This, and Walter Lippmann’s phrase, “the manufacture of consent” come to mind when listening to this piece.

On “The 300”, KWA expounds on the notions of world government and generalized paranoia. This track is also an example of the way in which KWA evokes his message. Judiciously, as a cooperation between himself and the sampled speakers featured on the CD. KWA provides the backdrop and mood, and the speakers provide the content. He nobly credits all of them in the liner notes with additional sources cited for more information. The intended cumulative effect is to better communicate the topics in the sampled oratories with the aid of audio scores, in the same fashion that movie soundtracks enhance emotional responses from an audience.

By the time the listener finds their way to the beginning of the last track, “Venetian Casino”, they will have a general idea as to what they’ll experience. The track is essentially a continuation of the previous two. A sampled speaker talks of discontenting situations that are interposed and supported with musical renderings. “Venetian Casino” is the point in which the art either sells itself, or fails completely. If the audience is open minded to the kind of artistic expression KWA practices, then the polarizing nature of the work will either inspire or annoy. This is the bottom line when any kind of experimental art is put forth to be experienced.

KWA makes music in a world that will not recognize it as that. However, the discerning audience member and possible fan will understand that such an indictment of music is ridiculous, and hitherto realize the constrained notions of what music is. With all the sounds available to humanity, only a few small specialized groups of timbres are used to make, and in turn, experience musical expression. A shame for sure, but artists like KWA will always exist beyond the outskirts of orthodoxy, offering a welcome alternative to the accepted paradigms of thought and expression. This is music that will have to be doggedly pursued by avid connoisseurs of experimentation and will only succeed if the listener wants it to.

Just You And Me

2010-12-31T17:48:00.016-07:00

We walked and walked
So far, for so long
In the early sunrise
You took care of me
In the sunset, in love
I took care of you
Nothing will ever be the same

And now
You rest your little legs
Soothe our hearts
Breathe for sleep
Lay your head down

One last time

Now you will see
All that you have made me
You and me
As I watch life leave you
And you fade into something else
My tears will not be the last thing you see

Just you and me

What will I ever do without you

Music Reviewing

2010-11-22T11:03:00.008-07:00

If anyone wants to experience an obscene amount of adjectives, synonyms, and metaphors from yours truly, well then look no further than my page at Ariel Publicity's music reviewing site. Yes, I got a job writing reviews due largely in part to this blog (wow, people actually read this shit!?) for clients of Ariel and CD Baby. I elected not to post any of 'em here because the writing style is more professional and polished, and less of the kind of personable vernacular found on here. The long version is, I didn't think my reviews would mesh well with all the individualistic windbag banter of this blog. But nonetheless, it's fun and challenging to write and critique fellow musicians, and in the process maybe elucidate alternative meanings from the music and hence make the whole listening experience richer for the music lover.

My Favorite Guitarists

2010-09-21T09:11:00.030-06:00

A while back, I put together a list of my favorite singers. So now I thought it’d make sense to stick to the list idea to talk about some of my favorite guitar players, as well as adding youtube links to serve as samples of their individual styles. Like the singers, they’re diverse, but not incredibly diverse. Basically, they’ve been ingrained in my mind as the definition of good musicians. All the guitarists are fairly well known and have been at it for years. Most likely, the list will surely disappoint a few musicological snobby nerds out there because there’s no obscure gems here. And while I like plenty of lesser known players, they simply haven’t had the kind of impact on me (yet) that these guys have. One common defining feature of the people on this list is that through time and repetition, they’ve been able to hone their craft and sculpt their styles into that most elusive, most sought after holy grail of the arts – originality.

Richard Thompson

The music and imagery of Richard Thompson’s music embody the sea and lands of times past in a way that is strikingly familiar but distant. After getting his start in the U.K. with Fairport Convention in the late ‘60s, he embarked on a solo career with his wife Linda until the marriage dissolved in 1982. Ultimately this put Thompson in a position to do what he does best – the solitary singer and songwriter. His complex finger-picking and knack for picking just the right sounding chords often through alternate guitar tunings, propel the music as a subtle undercurrent while he sings songs that I would call ‘modern folklore’. He avoids string bending and blues phrases, which through limitation and isolation from his contemporaries has forced him to come up with new ways of making traditional music sound brand new.

1952 Vincent Black Lighting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxKTzwaEa2o&a=GxdCwVVULXdEB6qKUkZRqQgndZRJytiR&list=ML&playnext=1
Persuasion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBKobc6cfzA

Dickey Betts
Unfortunately Dickey Betts has had to live most of his artistic life in the shadow of Duane Allman. It’s hard to compete when your fellow guitarist and bandmate was instantly lionized upon his tragic death at 24. Yet, since 1971 and until 2000, Betts has asserted himself as a unique guitarist and masterful songwriter in the Allman Brothers Band. Growing up in Florida and Georgia, he came to love country, blues, and had a particular affection for the Gypsy Jazz of Django Reinhardt. So much so, that his song ‘Jessica’ is in part tribute to Reinhardt as it’s played with just the index and middle fingers (Reinhardt’s left hand was crippled, and he only had access to these two fingers for his fretwork) and in part to his newborn daughter Jessica in 1973. Betts’ solos and trademark harmonies have a happy sounding quality to them that blended perfectly with Duane Allman’s bluesy slide guitar. To my ears, Betts has surpassed his old friend, and over the years his originality in playing and deft song architecture have always made me smile.

Blue Sky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1jpQu6qR1E

Eddie Van Halen

If there’s one towering figure on this list, it’s EVH. Why? Because nothing’s been the same since Van Halen’s debut in 1978 when he was 22. Such was his impact on music, guitar playing, and guitar building, that the terms ‘pre and post Van Halen’ have sometimes been used to categorize guitarists since. Born in the Netherlands and then quickly transplanted to Southern California, Ed grew up in an open-minded musical environment that fostered his creativity and exploration into music’s uncharted territory. A DIY aesthetic led him to tear apart and refashion guitars and amps in pursuit of the perfect tools that would allow him to achieve his vision of sound. Along the way he adopted two handed tapping and made it his own, he was the first to use a Floyd Rose tremolo system in a radical way, and he fundamentally changed the way guitars are designed and played. Not since Hendrix has a musician so changed the shape of popular music as Eddie has. In my mind, he’s not just a guitarist but a musician and songwriter that’s monumentally raised the bar for creativity.

Live guitar solo spot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUrwa3TMSwE&feature=related

Ry Cooder
To me, Ry Cooder and his music embody the American spirit. It is one of diversity, struggle, ingenuity, and exploration that begins with his guitar. Coming to prominence in the mid ‘60s as in demand session guitarist, Cooder eventually started to make albums of his own in the decades to follow. He became the de-facto keeper and preserver of American music through his renditions of classics and the traditional instruments he played them on. Throughout a long career he has touched and enhanced every form of indigenous music to America and more recently ventured into Indian, Cuban, African, and Tejano music. Regardless of the style he’s playing, Ry Cooder’s pristine timbre and slide work have continually resonated over the years.

Paris Texas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TCRe3tkYe8

Pat Metheny

One of the most diverse and original musicians I can think of; Pat Metheny has been at the vanguard of contemporary music since the mid ‘70s. He was a prodigy from Missouri that had played with Gary Burton, Jaco Pastorious, and taught at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, all while he was still a teenager. Although he’s been known to cross vast lines between genres and adapt well to just about anything, his most lasting legacy will be for his unique approach to jazz. To me, Metheny’s music sounds like a cross between jazz, folk-country, and new age. In words this of course seems like a horrendous amalgamation of unlike territories, but he makes it sound and work very very well. And this sound along with the tone of his guitar have become staples of modern jazz.

Bright Size Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG8IE14hi8M

David Gilmour
As a member of Pink Floyd, David Gilmour has melded some of the most dissimilar styles of music into one. Born and bred in England, Gilmour grew up listening to American blues and pop music. By the time he joined Pink Floyd in 1968, blues influenced rock had become the norm. However, Gilmour’s contribution was to open everything up by employing a very minimal and simple blues technique and mixing it with the psychedelic and later heady approach of Pink Floyd. He pays equal attention to space and silence as much as he does to his meticulously chosen notes; which give his solos an enormous breadth of tonality and auditory expanse. The summation of all this was an original sound that’s become the trademark of one of the most successful bands ever.

Sorrow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5EDqQtnRrc&feature=related

Zakk Wylde

In my mind there’s never been a finer heavy metal guitarist than Zakk Wylde. In fact everything about him including the way he looks and acts exudes the metal ethos. He grew up in New Jersey and was drafted to be Ozzy Osbourne’s new guitar player in 1987 when he was just 20. Since then he’s mostly stayed with Ozzy in addition to starting up his own projects like Black Label Society along the way. Wylde has always been very disciplined and dedicated to his craft, and has maintained a hard working ‘meat and potatoes’ ethic that’s produced a lot of material over the years. His style is aggressive, meticulous, energetic, and really the best way I can describe his sound is that he just fucking rips!

I Don't Know
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5DLyVOH9-8

Bill Frisell
The music and approach of Bill Frisell are a positive anomaly. Hailing from Denver, Frisell was always an ardent student of the guitar, eventually going on to study at a University level. Since the early ‘80s he’s been active in multiple styles but is most often categorized as Americana or Jazz. What sets him apart is his open mindedness and his full embrace of technology. In fact I would call Frisell’s music, ‘Neo-Americana’ with a jazz/folk approach because through the use of effects he builds multi textured layers of sound that are humbling to listen to in the same way a sunset looks on an open plain. He’s played Nashville country, New York hardcore, Appalachian folk, but is most at home and original when he’s on his own with just a guitar and a few processors.

Shenandoah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svzv-YkUzdk

The Edge

As U2’s main musical driving force, The Edge has stubbornly carved his own niche over the past 30 years. Since the Dublin based band of teenagers’ debut in 1980, he’s resisted the trends of all musical fads and pursued his own artistic course. While rock guitar took on a virtuosic and at times ridiculous approach to technique and soloing in the ‘80s, The Edge focused on the textures of his band’s music, and by decade’s end had established a signature rhythmic, chiming guitar sound. Likewise, the ‘90s brought experimentation with effects processors that changed the notion of his role as the guitarist in U2 to more of a chief sound manipulator. One constant that’s remained throughout is that no matter what everyone else is doing, The Edge will be doing something different to equal or greater affect.

On recording With Or Without You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkgvIPpdboA&feature=related

Mark Knopfler
When it comes to Mark Knopfler’s music and guitar playing, less has always been more. This economical approach was intact from the beginning when his old band Dire Straits began playing their brand of quiet rock in the punk infused London club circuit of the late ‘70s. By the ‘80s the band had ascended to a world wide popularity built on simplicity, due in part to Knopfler’s trademark finger picking that, unlike the music, is not simple. Weaved throughout his more recent solo outings and Dire Straits' entire catalog are his soft plucked melodic lead guitar lines that always complement the song with a detailed beauty. The grounding in minimalism has served him well, as he’s established a unique territory on the guitar.

Romeo And Juliet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-G-GHTFoX4&feature=related

Mix of Knopfler riffs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdyC_2Mb4n4&feature=related

Make Like A Leaf

2010-06-21T21:51:00.011-06:00

Today while working at home, I noticed the wind rustled shadows of leaves projecting onto the surface of my desk. This isn't the first time I've noticed this phenomena as I've accumulated a lot of pictures over the years that I've taken of these two dimensional representations. But today, I thought to make a video of the event to, I guess, preserve the experience in some way. So I did and here it is with no sound. It may look like a black and white video but in fact it was shot in color with a blank piece of white paper as a backdrop. After watching it a few times I began to think of aesthetics and what this little video meant to me.

I thought of the idea of representation. Of course this is a video which is a representation of what I saw with my eyes, yet it doesn't do the job completely well because cameras see differently than humans. For instance; the video quality is a lot poorer than my eyes. I don't see in pixels like this (at least not this defined) and it's an extremely trunciated view of the experience as it happened because even though I was focused on this event, my entire vision encompassed all the other things in my immediate area that the video does not (not to mention my four other senses), but this later quality is what makes it special. This is the quality that Immanuel Kant called, "Presentation". Kant considered works of art presentations of representative objects that are imprinted on our imaginations. This is what I think has to do with why we, as in humanity, consider some things to be evocative. This is one of the qualities of art, and an example of why art is so wonderful and complex at the same time. One of the other beauties of art, is that it's extremely different for every individual - and that, to me, is extraordinary because you can't nail it down to one thing like a science or logical equation. The old cliche, "One man's junk is another man's treasure" fits well here.

Another representative aspect to this is the fact that I did not invent or make in an original way the leaves, wind, sheet of paper, or light that makes the shadows. All I did was hit record. But I'm presenting it in a way that could be original (it's most definitely not, but this is just for the purpose of an explanation) in the sense that objects which I didn't create are "remade" into objects that I've manipulated into being something that they are not normally thought to be. They're remade in the viewers imagination as something else by the medium of the video. In this way the video can be more interesting than the actual occurrence I saw playing out on my desk. I don't personally think it is, but I do think the video gives it a different quality that equals the original.

So is this video art? Well, kinda; if only because I think it's neat and beautiful in itself. Surely others will disagree and I wouldn't fight 'em because I don't have a lot at stake here - after all it's just a short little video that I thought of on the fly. One of the interesting things about aesthetics is that a philosophic analysis can either enhance or denigrate the art in question. In the case of this, I think it takes away from the experience of watching it as a stand alone piece. I've always liked critical perspectives but the catch is that somehow through the process of trying to understand something, a certain magical luster is seemingly etched away from the end result that would otherwise be evocative. A similar thing used to happen to me when I was first learning guitar. I would anxiously do my best to learn a song I liked, but once I had learned it to a degree of reasonable ability, hearing the song on its own again didn't mean as much to me. It was as if all the specialness and magic had been taken from it through my breaking it down and putting it back together again to understand it. Same goes for certain aesthetic analysis of works of art. If this video was just that and nothing else, there would be a certain mystery to it. It's not altogether obvious at first that the moving objects are projections of leaves in the wind. What would the viewer think before that conclusion is reached? That's the part that makes it viable art to some people's eyes. It's that curiosity that gives it weight and ultimate meaning. And this is one of the many reasons why people are drawn to art.

2010: The Year Something Weird Happened On Jupiter

2010-06-03T22:17:00.019-06:00

A few weeks ago I had heard that something strange was going on with Jupiter. Specifically something in its atmosphere. And ya know the first few things that entered my mind were not good. Inside my paranoid head the dialogue with myself went something like this:

“Holy shit! Jupiter’s atmosphere’s changing!? Wow. Can’t wait to see it through the scope!”
“Wait a minute, isn’t that what happened in that one movie? What was is it called… Hmm… Oh yeah, 2010.”
“2010!”
“And it’s 2010 now.”
“2010: The Year We Make Contact”
“Roy Scheider and Soviets.”
“And uh well, it’s really 2010 now.”
“Yeah, that was the movie where, besides being a less than spectacular follow-up to 2001: A Space Odyessy but a decent flick nonetheless, Jupiter turned itself inside out and became a second sun in our solar system with its own brand of life living on Europa.”
“That’s the one.”
“And it’s 2010 right now…”
“Damn, I really need to find out when Jupiter’s out tonight.”

And so I did find out. It wasn’t that night, but at about 3:00 AM the next morning. The alarm was set and soon enough I was out there with my telescope and a precautionary flashlight just in case any of those pesky back monoliths decided to show up in the dark – nothing good happens when those things rear their not so ugly but mysteriously scary rectangular bodies! Once I trained the scope on Jupiter, I did see what all the fuss was about. It was missing one of its dark bands of clouds that encircle the planet. In all honestly I saw pictures on the internet before hand, but seeing it with my own eyes was pretty neat and reminded me why I like this stuff in the first place. But I have to say, that I like Jupiter better the old way – more dynamical and interesting looking. Anyway, turns out that according to astronomers, this phenomena is not that uncommon and tends to happen in roughly 15 year cycles specifically with this part of the planet, which is officially called, the South Equatorial Belt or SEB. Seems like a pretty big deal to me though, since I’ve known for a long time that 2.5 Earths could fit into The Great Red Spot which is itself surrounded by this cloud band that is now gone. Seems like I should’ve heard about this in the major world news and not some backwater astronomy website. And then I remembered – it’s not of this world, so that’s why, duh!

Photos by: Anthony Wesley

Since that first night, I’ve gone out a few other times just to make sure I don’t see any atmospheric implosions and weird star children-fetuses like in the movie. And plus it’s nice to have the early morning silence not interrupted by that iconic part from Also Sprach Zarathustra and friggin’ black monoliths, but by birds happily singing as the first light of the sun comes up.

The I/O\I Sampler Plate

2010-05-01T18:39:00.000-06:00

So I think an explanation here is in order. This bizarre little oddity came about while working on a bunch of new material. And well, I guess I got bored or hungry because I started thinking about food; namely the kinds of appetizers restaurants serve that give a little sampling of all their different kinds of food. So naturally I thought to combine the sampler platter with music to make a kind of I/O\I appetizer. This track is 11.5 minutes of chopped, sliced, diced, fried, and pureed music from all 26 songs on the first CD. Weird yes, but nonetheless a fun experiment while working away on new stuff.

Geraldo Made Me Watch TV And Listen To Mercyful Fate - Parts I, II, & III

2010-04-10T10:32:00.006-06:00

Part: I

Geraldo

Monkey see, monkey do.

~ American proverb

Like many adolescent kids, I was introduced to Satanism through Geraldo Rivera. At the time, I had never seen his now infamous TV special on the outcast religion, and, um ratings snatcher. In fact I had never seen enough of his show to garner any kind of lasting attention. To me, it was just more of that melodramatic adult-type stuff like soap operas and local news shows that I avoided in my daily TV playground. So when I saw his ad on the front page of the TV Guide, I thought it looked about as interesting as the dash of cookie crumbs and their corresponding grease moats that were slowly soaking into the newsprint and spotting his pictoral pitch. It was something along the lines of; “Exclusive, Special Edition of The Geraldo Rivera Show. Tuesday night on ABC, Geraldo investigates Satanism. Check your local listings.”

A necessary digression:

I’ve always had problems spelling. During elementary school, I was placed in the next to lowest spelling group by my teachers. It was great because I didn’t have to work as hard as the kids in the highest group. They had to wrestle with things like, contagion and pernicious, while I lackadaisically rolled around with the likes of, cat and happy. So when I saw ‘Satanism’ next to Geraldo’s mustache, my mind read it as ‘Satinism’. I thought it was a special on fabrics like satin and silk and stuff. With the colorful newsprint cover of Geraldo standing in what looked like a cave next to a bunch of candles, I assumed he was giving his, “Special Investigative Report” from India or Thailand in some kind of dilapidated 3rd world ‘Satin’ factory. Looked boring as hell.

Farther down the path of digression:

My friend Tyler had told me that a bunch of bands we both liked were involved with, ‘colts’. Still, my mind did not process this word and meaning correctly. He said his friend Richard told him that his pastor had given him a list of musical artists that were involved in devil worshiping ‘coltish’ activities, including; Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Cinderella, Pink Floyd, Ratt, Cyndi Lauper (huh?), Guns N Roses, Kiss, Poison, Led Zeppelin, Sheena Easton (yup, that’s right), Iron Maiden, Great White, AC/DC (he told me that this acronym stood for; After Christ / Devil Comes), Judas Priest, Bon Jovi, W.A.S.P. (again the real meaning; We. Are. Satanic. Perverts… This is so funny because, now I picture a bunch of hooded Satanic monks chanting, holding candles, and aimlessly walking around a fire in their black robs with protruding boners), and of course, Mr. Ozzy Osbourne. So it was these bands that were part of the colts as well as, I guess, some kinds of horses (we had been studying ancient mythology that dealt with minotaurs and centaurs and ladies with snakes for hair; all kinds of cool shit!) and back then, the horrendously bad Indianapolis Colts. The message was telling us to stay away from it all. I listened good and hard because the mystique of it was the most fascinating part and I wanted to know more. Like an authoritative figure telling a kid, “whatever you do; never, ever, go down those stairs to the basement and look behind that curtain. Never, ever, never do that!” Just like Dorothy with The Wizard of Oz, any kid or adult will admit that the looking is the funnest part! Hence the Geraldo special airing during prime time.

Once I found out that Satan was not a type of fabric, and that Cults were not horses, I relentlessly searched the TV Guide for the next re-run. And Bingo! I found one airing on Thanksgiving Day. And now you say, ”What?!” Geraldo prefaced the rerun by saying the decision was made to air the popular segment during the day on a holiday so that teenagers and adults that might not have seen the original would get to see it on their day off – I’m not kidding here, he really did do that. So I watched with glee, until I was genuinely scared. Tales of torture, obsessed teenage killers, sexual rituals, children born into Satanic cults that are afraid to leave when older, Charles Manson, drugs, the Son of Sam serial killer David Berkowitz, screaming preachers holding crucifixes to exorcise the possessed, and plenty of references to Heavy Metal music. The interviews with convicted satanic murders, ‘special occult division’ law enforcement officers, rockers Ozzy and King Diamond, various religious experts from the Christian church to the daughter of the Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey. As an 11 year-old kid, it was at a minimum, terrifying and disturbing, yet I was charged with an inquisitive eagerness to know more. I remember wanting to change it to the Disney Channel a few times but my curiosity had other plans.

Geraldo crew taping a King Diamond concert

Ozzy talks to Geraldo

According to Geraldo’s special investigative report, Devil Worship; Exposing Satan’s Underground, some of the “warning signs of a child’s drift toward Satanism include:”

• Abrupt emotional changes
• Changes in school habits
• Rejection of parental values
• Obsession with rock music groups using Satanic symbols or references
• Rejection of friends
• Preference for being alone

So we can deduce that most of us are, or have been Satanists at some point. I’m guessing that the source of Geraldo’s empirical data was found in fortune cookies, and journalistic integrity was not in his astrology chart that day. This list was made by, and for people that are possessed with malleable, dusty brains. The only useful information to be found here is that human emotion and thought can be hijacked. It’s proof of something larger at work.

With Geraldo playing the passionately poetic narrator, Thanksgiving daytime TV watchers were exposed to all of this mayhem mixed with the very clever editing of images and interviews that, in the end, produced a kind of happy ending. All together now; “What?!!” That’s right, “happy ending” because we watched 40 minutes of tabloid ‘trash’ TV with 20 minutes of wholesome commercials. And, in the end, that’s the point of TV – the greatest vehicle for advertisement in history.

Part: II

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”
~ Yoda

There’s a common misconception about the Devil living in the center of the Earth. This is far from the truth because the truth is closer to us than we think.

Warning: This Might Sting a Little

He lives in the center of our living rooms, inside our TV sets. Television is clearly evil in the sense that, as an abstraction, it preys on our emotions and deprives us of judgment and critical thought. It has become so ubiquitous and transparent that we no longer notice it as a spectacle or neat appliance, but rather as an invisible part of us that plays into all aspects of our lives. We become what we see, without knowing it. It’s a modern marvel built by Satanic geniuses.

But?

• “But TV is a valid and useful news outlet.”

The News
Okay, I’ll admit that I can see the usefulness of a communication tool in times of severe weather – I do live in tornado alley. But it’s extremely half-assed because with the internet, one can get that information faster and from the same source (National Weather Service) that the talking heads get it from and without the mock dramatizations. Local and national news programs have always been a funny enigma to me. In the span of half an hour to an hour, we receive an extremely truncated version of news worthy material. Serious expressions from well dressed and good looking hosts give way to light hearted banter as we watch the reading of a story from a teleprompter to a segueway into the next segment. In my view these people are not journalists but instead actors or performers whose main job is to look good and act as professional and inoffensive as possible. Seriously; why would anyone watch this diluted crap when a good ole’ fashioned newspaper or an online news site is within reach? Both of these formats are far more efficient in that it takes less time to absorb more information, and unlike broadcast news, one has a choice on what news to read. My only guess about this topic is laziness. Instead of reading the news in an engaging fashion, TV watchers are simply and generally told the news in a passive state – it’s easier.

• “But TV is a form of entertainment.”

Sporting Events
Hey, I like football as much as anyone, but when I sit on my ass and watch a 3 hour NFL game that has an average of 10 minutes of actual play time, I can’t help but think that I’ve been ‘sold on the cheap.’ The other 2 hours and 50 minutes were spent watching players mill around and line up, coaches mouthing plays and getting pissed, injuries, half-time shows, replays in slo-mo, listening to useless commentary, and of course the commercials; which tend to be of the manly variety – beer, trucks, Viagra, etc. The infamous Joe Six-Pack plays into the hands of advertisers as his belly grows and his bank account gets punished.

What!?

TV Stoners & Teleholics
Television is psychologically addictive. Like other addicts ranging from the closet variety to the full blown “I need a fix!” type; TV watchers will never admit to watching too much television. According to a 2008 study by Nielsen Media Research, the average American household watches an average of 8 hours and 18 minutes per day, while the average daily TV time for an individual is 4 hours and 45 minutes. And everyone’s familiar with that glazed over stare that accompanies the couch potato; directly attributed to rapid editing, visual and auditory effects, and of course the emotional pull, whether it be suspense, comedy, action, sorrow, or joy. Television is a visual medium specifically designed by and for visual creatures. Is it any wonder that the communication of messages through the tube to the watcher closely resembles the way humans learn? We’ve become so accustomed to its existence that we unknowingly depend on it. And that’s the point. To create isolated voyeuristic creatures that openly receive information laced with neat rewards that ultimately damage them, but fulfill another. It’s a legitimate business strategy that has worked for all human history; TV is just the newest incarnation.

The Commercials
The genius of TV and its parent, the advertising industry, is the clandestine creation of needs. The physical TV is the delivery truck, and the medium is the shipment of goods right to our eyes and ears. There’s a catchphrase called, Content & Fill that’s used in the advertising industry to describe the ratio of Content; being the commercials, to the Fill; being the vehicle or show to deliver the message. I’m gonna hand it over to my good buddy Noam Chomsky for this one. In this answer to an interviewer’s question he clarifies and takes the point farther:

The content is the advertising. The fill is the car chase or the sex scene or something, that's supposed to keep you going between ads. If you look at a television program; the creativity and the imagination and the expenses and so on are for the ads; the car chase you can pull off the shelf. And in fact this has led to a serious deterioration of the political system… (and now a necessary digression-ed.) Take a look at the last campaign (presidential ’04). The campaigns are run by the same people who sell toothpaste, exactly the same PR agencies. And when they sell a candidate they do it the exact same way they sell a lifestyle drug. You don't put up information about the candidate, what you do is create delusional images that delude and deceive. The population knows it. A very small number of the population, about 10% of the voters, literally, knew the stands of the candidates on the issues. And it's not because they are stupid or uninterested. It's just like you don't know the characteristics of toothpaste.

Chomsky kinda goes off on a political tangent here, but what he’s alluding to is that, the medium of television has the ability to be anti-democratic and controlling.
==>One way is through the ownership of broadcasting companies that consist of large conglomerates with multiple business interests. To function efficiently as companies, they would not communicate media or news that conflicts with their business interests, thus presenting a biased view. However, it’s important that they present their view as fair, balanced, and complete to the public in order to engage the maximum amount of viewers.
==>The second way is that through the distractive nature of TV; audiences are made to be fearfully apathetic. It has been said that a population is easier to control if they are distracted from things that matter. If people are obsessed with consumerism and superficialities, they will be less likely to care about important issues. If people are afraid and uneasy, their anxiety can be used to sell anything from bug spray and fuel injection cleaner, to guns and war. The bottom line here is to keep people from thinking by dumbing them down and distracting them.

Brave New World & 1984
Aldous Huxley published Brave New World in 1932; and we have been feeling the aftershock ever since. Not because of the book, but because of its story and irony becoming truer everyday. It's about a country that's very happy and somewhat utopian. The government of the fictional country achieved this by drugging the populace into passivity with commodities and drugs that everyone wants and needs. Sounds scary and familiar to me. 1984 was published in 1949 by George Orwell. This book paints a similar portrait, but instead of mindless passivity, the population of Orwell's country are controlled strictly and brutally via an invisible totalitarian dictator and regime. Both books use the sci-fi platform to tell about humanity's path. 1984 is reminscent of the U.S.S.R. and Brave New World is reminscent of families watching 8 hours plus of TV per day...

Where’s The Funny Part?

Have you ever encountered:

• Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
• Seasonal Affect Disorder (SAD)
• Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD)

I’m guessing a few have heard of these disorders. But not from their doctors. That’s because they were made up by advertising agencies – and one comedian.

This is manipulation in its finest sense, and the key is our participation. If we didn’t buy the products featured on TV, the television medium would not exist. Geraldo had a hit with his Satanism special and subsequent re-runs because there was a demand for it. His staff and ABC knew this; that’s the reason they produced it. Fear is the fuel that makes the machine go and the public’s best interest is not to be informed and educated in a critical way, but to be manipulated through entertainment into mindsets of paranoia and anxiety that produce diluted thinking and soft conclusions.

• I remember my giddy pleasure when the Kibbles ‘n Bits commercial came on. “ I want my Kibbles ‘n Bits ‘n Bits ‘n Bits…” It’s almost like proto hip-hop!
• My mother always got a little teary-eyed at the end of the American Express commercials. Shit, I just found one on youtube with Jerry Seinfeld as a fish out of water in Britain promoting the card that had me smirking.
• And the ‘Bud Light; Real Men of Genius’ series. Funny, funny stuff!
• Who can forget the crying Indian commercials from the 1970s as part of the, ‘Keep America Beautiful’ campaign.

The point being, is that this stuff is powerful and works marvelously. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with laughing and crying. But when our emotions are hijacked for the purposes of marketing a product to us, it just feels sinister even though we’re all laughing.

And Then What?

The Off Button
Saturation, submersion; the idea is not to notice it. But when the TV is figured out and turned off… well, it’s like we’re being turned on! It’s like a cold beer on a Friday afternoon; it’s like taking ski boots off; it’s like an amazing bowel movement; it’s like an orgasm; it’s like listening to your first Mercyful Fate album!

Part: III

Mercyful Fate

"Ah, ah, We come from the land of the ice and snow, From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow. How soft your fields so green, Can whisper tales of gore, Of how we calmed the tides of war. We are your overlords."
~ Robert Plant

When is it known that something is a classic? Everyone’s answer would be different of course, but for me, it’s when that something resonates for ages in life. Music, art, books, movies. Anything that’s left a mark; a perfect scar that’s brushed over from time to time, reminding its way back from distant memories into the present.

In the early ‘80s, Denmark produced one of its finest exports in the form of a Heavy Metal band called, Mercyful Fate. Although I wouldn’t discover them until long after their demise; I feel that I carry the torch in a sense for this band, because I’ve been a fan for more than half my life, and most importantly, I still enjoy their music.

The first time I heard about them was on some of Geraldo Rivera’s Satanism specials. On the very first episode Geraldo showed some footage of a King Diamond concert with overdubbed commentary by the singer and then a solid debunking by Geraldo claiming that Diamond was full of “bull.” Then on a subsequent episode, Geraldo had a panel of formerly troubled adolescents, that when questioned about their old music habits, one of them said he had listened to King Diamond when he used to be in Mercyful Fate. And that was all I needed to connect the dots. While I’d heard King Diamond on his own and thought that the stuff was okay; the Geraldo show made Mercyful Fate out to be a far more intense and dangerous band. This of course piqued my curiosity and drove me to find out more about this relatively obscure band.

So I went out and bought their first album on tape; 1983’s Melissa, and I remember being simultaneously disappointed and intrigued. Disappointed because the audio was so bad – it sounded like it was recorded in a basement with a cheap ghetto blaster. Yet it was intriguing for the same reason. Melissa is so low-budget sounding that it adds to the already dark demeanor of the band and subject matter. It’s as if they recorded it in a secret dungeon while satanic rituals were taking place. The band sounded fresh, raw, intense; all the characteristics of a young group that’s hungry for success. Often this is the best a band will ever be because their passion is firmly organic. There are no other factors to corrupt the group’s vision like contracts, money, fame; the trappings that dog established acts and sometimes cripple them permanently. Yet band members unanimously support and push each other in the face of poverty, ill relationships, jobs; anything would be sacrificed for the benefit of the band. It’s a rare instance when one can hear the force that drives the collective spirit of individuals in their pursuit of a common goal.

Some Historical Background

Mercyful Fate came together in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1980. They comprised of; King Diamond(Kim Bendix Petersen) on vocals, Michael Denner on guitar, Hank Sherman(Rene Krolmark) on guitar, Timi 'Grabber' Hansen on bass, and Kim Ruzz on drums. Their most distinguishing factor is Diamond’s appearance and vocals. Obviously influenced by Alice Copper and Kiss, Diamond donned black and white face paint in various guises that usually included an inverted crucifix on his forehead. Known as ‘Ghoul Paint’ the style would later be adopted by a new generation of Scandinavian Black Metal bands. Diamond possesses a unique voice in that his vocal range spans from a low growling type of sound, to a mid tenor and most unusually, a high falsetto that’s mostly associated with R&B and Disco – think Barry Gibb from the Bee Gees getting into a brawl with Freddy Kruger.

"Evil" from Melissa

After Melissa they released, Don’t Break the Oath, in 1984 which had a much needed and improved production quality. 1985 brought the band worldwide attention when they were included in Tipper Gore’s PMRC campaign and subsequent list of “the filthy fifteen” artists with songs that the campaign found especially insidious. Their song, Into The Coven was included for references to the occult and Satanism. Also in that year, internal tensions in the band drove them to break up, with Diamond, Hansen, and Denner going on to play in the King Diamond solo act. Hank Sherman started a pop-rock band called Fate and Kim Ruzz retired from music and became a postal worker. Two really good posthumous releases came in later years; The Beginning in ’87 and Return Of The Vampire in ’92. These albums contain odd rarities like demos, bootlegs, and b-sides from ’80 to ’82; and like Melissa they have that horrendous audio quality that adds to the mystique of the band. In 1993 the band decided to try it again and reformed with everyone except Kim Ruzz. Since then they’ve released five albums; In The Shadows in ’93, Time in ’94, Into The Unknown in ’96, Dead Again in ’98, and 9 in ’99. Along the way Hansen and Denner left, leaving Diamond and Sherman as the only original members. Since 2000 Mercyful Fate has been on an indefinite hiatus because strangely, they have no financial backing to record or tour.

A recent TV spot with former guitarist, Michael Denner

The Lawnmower Boy

A Mercyful Fate tape was never far from my walkman. As a teenager, I mowed lawns for cash like many do, and always had a clunky cassette player strapped to my hip. I was a confirmed teenage Heavy Metal Warrior, and I definitely fought the good fight for the cause. A fan of what’s called the Golden Age of Metal, I gravitated toward Metal that someone 10 years older than I would like. I virtually listened to no contemporary music in the early ‘90s and would cringe or step up to the soapbox and preach about today’s music when some poor soul would mention or even allude to Grunge or Alternative. While my friends were listening to Pantera and Metallica, I was happily at home listening to my Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. And even today, if it’s going to be Metal, for me it’s going to be Metal that was produced or made by a band that’s been firmly established before 1985. Nowadays I’ve long since retired my Metal armor – as it’s definitely a genre that caters to the minds and hearts of adolescent males – although every now and then, I’ll don the battle gear and reminisce about the times of yore while I mow my own lawn even though no one pays me.

Song & Dance Men

From my point of view, Mercyful Fate is not an evil entity. They’re musical performers that earn their dinner with song and dance. Listening to them is like watching an old black and white horror movie on Halloween; harmless and fun. It makes me chuckle when people take it seriously because they and Geraldo are entertainers in every sense, capitalizing on their niche. And the fad of Satanism in the ‘80s was good for many, whether it be bands singing about the depths of Hell or mock investigative reporters doing specials on the topic. Everyone was out to make a profit and business was good.

"A Dangerous Meeting" from Don't Break The Oath

Guerrilla Camera Phone #3

2010-03-17T10:18:00.006-06:00

...and the theme today is windows!

The owner and operator of said camera phone playing around while he should be working.

A nice bullet hole in a back alley window in a part of town that seems to attract a lot of bullets.

Looking through a window that had the remains of some ad or something that looked a lot like Don Johnson to me.

The Best CDs of the '00s

2010-02-09T20:29:00.015-07:00

So here’s a list of CDs to come out in the last ten years that I think deserve praise and acknowledgement. And who better than me to give it, because I’ve been a closet critic for most of my life (in all truth it seems we’re all critics on matters that are dear) and I’m a musician that loves music and the arts; and I tend to be pretty outspoken and opinionated on stuff I care about (who isn’t? [and what better way than a list to externalize it]) which tips the balance significantly in my world toward these things and less to things like; money (much to my dismay), lawn care (much to my neighbor’s dismay), or just plainly, stuff I couldn’t give two shits about. Anyway, I decided to make it since 2000 for no real reason, except that it seems like a good cutoff point in most people’s minds. So the list is sure to disappoint many but; hell it’s my list right? So read ‘em and weep or enjoy; or let me know what an idiot I am or just nod and agree. Let's move on...

• 2000
PJ Harvey – Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

Listeners will not need their skip button when listening to this CD, as there’s not a bad cut to be found here. On her 6th release, PJ Harvey demonstrates her diversity with a lighter and more atmospheric approach that recalls Patti Smith in ways but is still a unique document of Harvey’s voice and music. Her trademark rawness and lo-fi production are still present; but a sense of longing, exploration, loss, escape, and observations of nighttime cityscapes and dreams round out the theme of this CD. The picturesque scenes of “Big Exit”, “The Whores Hustle And The Hustlers Whore”, “Beautiful Feeling”, and “This Mess We’re In” just about jump out and bite the listener. Harvey has said that her songs are not necessarily personal, but just stories or tales – if this is true about this set, I think she needs an Oscar quick, because these songs radiate genuine honesty.

• 2001
Bjork – Vespertine

Like astronomers and physicists researching the unknowns of the quantum world, Bjork’s Vespertine is the musical equivalent of an exploration into the very small. Quiet, ambient beats support whispered instrumentation and melodic choirs as Bjork sings in her completely original voice about the inner life. This music is like a warm blanket in a small country cottage during the wee hours of a snowy night. The introversion of songs like; “Cocoon”, “Hidden Place”, and “Unison” are perfectly matched with other songs of winter like; “Pagan Poetry”, “Aurora”, “Frosti”, and “An Echo, A Stain”. And yes, it really does sound like winter. Using samples of boots walking through snow, glittery harps, and majestic sounding choirs, she pulls it off in a way that only Bjork can.

• 2002
Peter Gabriel – Up

This is Peter Gabriel’s best album of his entire career. It’s also his most polarizing and misunderstood. It sounds nothing like its predecessor Us from ’92 or the mid-eighties popular peak of So. In 2002 Gabriel returns to his early solo years with a more experimental sound, think; Games Without Frontiers, Intruder, and San Jacinto. But Up is also something different because it was produced by a 52 year-old Gabriel writing on subjects like aging, death, birth; about growing up continually throughout life. Musically the album navigates light and shade as the opener “Darkness” blasts noisy rhythms intersected by soft piano, “Sky Blue” features an outro of gospel singing and minimalist guitar, and “Signal To Noise” has screaming, orchestral strings, and tribal drums interlaced. Yet with all its diversity, it is a very simple, direct album as Up is a masterpiece of understatement from a man that can do great things with subtlety.

• 2003
King Crimson – The Power To Believe

For a band that started making music in 1969 to have a worthy album of material 34 years later is astonishing. This is in part due to guitarist and all around head-honcho, Robert Fripp guiding his band through the years with an artistic mind that has seen him play with 18 other members of Crimson in various versions and incarnations, changing stylistic directions like a switchback mountain road. In his own words, Fripp has said that King Crimson is not so much a band as it is a way of thinking about things. In 2003, Fripp is joined by; co-guitarist and vocalist, Adrian Belew, drummer Pat Mastelotto, and Trey Gunn on something called a Touch Warr Guitar, which seems to me a kind of hybrid between a bass, Chapman Stick, and a guitar. On the title track and it’s 3 other parts, Belew sings through a vocoder giving a ghostly feel to the music, while on songs like; “Level 5”, “Dangerous Curves”, and “Elektrik” Mastelotto merges acoustic and synthetic percussion to produce intriguing rhythms and sounds. This “way of thinking” has put together an album of material that fuses the dark machine-like heaviness of all eras of Crimson, with eclectic electronics that validate them as true genre benders.

• 2004
Squarepusher – Ultravisitor

This guy eats, shits, breathes, and dreams music in such a savant-ish way that it’s hard to imagine him doing anything else. And for his 10th album, Squarepusher (Tom Jenkinson) delivers a long set that proves this point, I think, better than any of his other releases before or since. Ultravistior functions as a “Best Of” album except that it’s not re-released material, but instead is the best of his musical traits displayed on one CD. From his drill n’ bass and IDM sonic explorations, to his jazz drumming and bass playing, to classical pieces like, “Andrei” and “Everyday I Love”, he covers more ground than he has ever done before. His creative and technical virtuosity are on full display here – Tom is, no kidding, one of the best bass players I’ve ever heard – but what really affects me is the scope and boundaries that are punched out by the music which gives it a distinct genre of its own.

• 2005
Dave Douglas – Keystone

Ass-kick’in Jazz is what I would call this. The very prolific trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas shows off a new band and approach on Keystone. These songs were written by Douglas as a tribute and a kind of soundtrack to the early 20th century comedian Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle and his silent films. I know nothing of silent cinema, but I do know that these tunes are not a throwback to the subject matter’s era but a much needed leap forward in thinking to modern jazz. Psychedelic keyboards, turntables, and funky to heavy hitting groovy drums are the addition to a saxophonist and Douglas’ trumpet. “Just Another Murder”, “Fatty’s Day Off”, “Famous Players”, and “Barnyard Flirtations” brilliantly show the adventurous spirit of the music and performers. I just wish contemporary jazz would wake up and do stuff like this that is truly in the spirit of jazz instead of turning jazz into a classicist genre by recycling the past – Wynton Marsalis; I’m talk’in to you buddy. Luckily, we have Dave Douglas and a handful of others that are crossing over and breaking down walls.

• 2006
Tomasz Stańko Quartet – Lontano

I heard this CD when it came out not knowing much about Tomasz Stańko or his band except that they’re all from Poland and play jazz. After I fell in love with Lontano, I went out and bought a handful of his other releases, but this one’s still my favorite. One of the amazing things about this recording is its textural sounds and microscopic attention to detail. I’m guessing that they recorded it live in an empty theater hall, because one can hear the room, the communication between the players, and the full range of improvisations from being hesitant to confident – warts and beauty marks. And this is the love; because mistakes and eloquent lyricism make it perfectly human, and what better way to be evocative than to elicit this unique animalistic quality in a way that only humans can. Restraint, weakness, patience; all are so elusive in the arts, but with respect for the past and an ear in the future, these guys understand the importance of space; in the room, between the notes. They play space and silence just as well as they play their instruments and this is the hallmark of mature, accomplished musicians. This album is a testament to what humans can do.

• 2007
Skinny Puppy – Mythmaker

Thank god or the devil, or Canada depending on your orientation that Skinny Puppy decided to reunite in ’03. Because without these influential pioneers, Industrial music is about as close as it can get to shit without them theses days. Why? Because Skinny Puppy paved the way for a new kind of extreme in musical experimentation and thinking that caught on in the ‘80s, but quickly devolved into watered down simulacra of the original intent. Heavy borrowing and filtering by Nine Inch Nails (Bubblegum Industrial), Marilyn Manson (shockingly laughable), and sadly, the once mighty Ministry (I love ‘em but they’ve been playing the same song since ’92) have just about bankrupted the genre. On Mythmaker, the Puppies come to the rescue with an album that hits you in the face and then nurses your senses back to life like a summer day. Particularly on the songs; “Dal”, “Haze”, “Jaher”, and “Pasturn” they show that in order to achieve real artistic darkness, a band needs to paint with plenty of light colors to emphasize the darks (evil metal bands, please take note). Dynamical in sound, performance, production, and composition is what Mythmaker is, as Skinny Puppy have once again annihilated their competition.

• 2008
M83 - Saturdays = Youth

On Saturdays = Youth, The French band M83 have embraced the pop music that they’ve always orbited closely but never touched. Gravity finally had its way in that the synth-pop of the ‘80s welcomed M83’s retro drum and keyboard synthesizers to the aged but smiling ‘Decadent’ decade. Throw in some modern dreamy vocals reminiscent of fellow Frenchmen Air, and we’ve got an album that’s uncompromising in its acceptance of the past while having the unique quality of sounding like something that could only have come out with 25 years of hindsight. On, “Kim and Jessie”, “Couleurs”, “We Own the Sky”, and “Graveyard Girl” waves of analog modeled synths and the sometimes sparse, chorusy guitars drench the listener in a new timeless goodness. For me, the song “Up!” can be seen as the most representative summary of the whole CD, because like the saying, it definitely looks back to look ahead. And that's exactly what M83 have managed to accomplish.

• 2009
Bill Frisell - Disfarmer

I’ve been listening to Bill Frisell for many years now and he’s never failed to impress me with his diversity and originality. Over the years he’s given new meaning to the term, ‘Americana’ in that he’s played in genres that are indigenous to America, yet imbibes all of it with his very original approach to song craft and guitar. With this CD, Frisell was asked to put music to the photography of the late Mike Disfarmer, which was being exhibited in a few galleries around the country. The namesake was a reclusive portrait photographer that took striking photos of people living in rural Arkansas in the first half of the 20^th century. For this, Frisell assembled a band consisting of a violinist, bassist, steel guitarist, and himself on guitars and effects. In 26 short songs we hear the landscape of Arkansas and think of a distant time that’s familiar but also new. “Shutter, Dream” finds Frisell giving traditional music a subtle kick forward without any disrespect as he plays old music boxes over acoustic bass harmonics and then brings a backward looped guitar and fiddle over the top of it all. “The Wizard” and “Farmer” are perfect examples of mixing old and new by employing feedback, mandolins, loops, music boxes, and slack rhythms that sound dissonant, inviting, rural, and modern. Frisell writes in the liner notes that he tried to “picture what went on in Disfarmer’s mind” and that he’d “like to imagine it coming from his point of view.” We'll never know, but I know this is a great CD.

The Fiction Bookshelf #3

2010-01-16T16:51:00.008-07:00

Zoli - Colum McMcan

I first heard of Zoli and its author Colum McCann on Bookworm, a weekly podcast that I religiously listen to. I was convinced early into the half hour show that I needed to read this book partly because of my long fascination with all things Eastern European and partly for the insight that McCann expounded upon host Michael Sliverblatt’s always unique questions. The Irish author gives an original take on the Roma and a not too far flung connection I sense is the common history of persecution between the Irish by the English and later Americans, and the not so subtle discrimination of the Roma by most of central and eastern Europe. Add to this McCann’s talents with prose and the loose fictionalization of Bronisława Wajs, a Polish Romani woman known as Papusza in her culture, and one has the novel Zoli.

The book starts in 1930’s Czechoslovakia with the childhood of Marienka “Zoli” Novotna and her Grandfather witnessing the deaths of their gypsy family by the fascist Hlinka Guard. McCann brings us into the post WW1 years of Eastern Europe where political chaos and instability are rampant. The Roma live on the outskirts of the societies they orbit by constantly traveling in close communities that share a culture that extends beyond national boundaries and tongues of the land. Gypsies are known as thieves and tricksters that live on the backs of hard working people, wandering the shadows with little of their own and nothing to offer contemporary life. While rival governments like socialists and fascists wrestle for power, the Roma keep to themselves and away from the centers of power that equally threaten their existence. And so a six year old girl and her grandfather watch in hiding as their kumpania (clan or extended tripe) including horses and wagons are forced onto an iced lake and soldiers set fire to the brush around the shore. The ice starts to crack, then break and the reader stands with the old man and girl watching a history and culture drown.

So begins the life of Zoli. Through this early lens she will become a prominent Romani woman that’s over flowing with talent as a singer and poet, and later as a kind of underground cultural icon inhabiting the imaginations of all kinds in post Soviet Europe.

Stephen Swan, a young journalist character of English and Slovakian descent that is a champion, lover, admirer, and unbeknownst exploiter of Zoli, soliloquizes;

There are those of us who haven’t yet told our stories, or refuse to tell them, and so we become them: we hide away inside the memory until we can no longer stand the shell or the shock – perhaps that’s me, or perhaps I must tell it before it’s forgotten or becomes, like everything else, something else.

Colum McCann brings together a European history of diversity and atrocity while giving his characters personalities that reflect both. In a story that spans her birth to death, Zoli is filled with love and drive but is constrained by the times she inhabits be it the war years or the cold war years spent in seclusion, and even the new found freedom of modern Slovakia. McCann’s Zoli is an image of repression bearing the lost gifts of humanity’s darkest days.

As a child Zoli’s grandfather gives her books and teaches her to read which is taboo in the Romani culture of the day. It’s a verbal, extremely insular culture that frowns upon education from the outside. Until the second half of the 20th century gypsy heritage and history have largely been past down by word of mouth and in so doing, inadvertently helped to perpetuate some of the urban myths of the Roma that are so often used against them. Zoli’s grandfather notices this and secretly teaches his daughter to be literate in the hopes of preserving their culture. All the while Zoli flourishes in the Romani traditions of music, and later as a singer commands local crowds of Roma eventually being noticed by intellectuals that subsequently translate her songs into books of poetry and finally the post WWII communist government of Czechoslovakia. The new government wants to bring the Roma out of the forest and into the cities by simultaneously embracing and assimilating them into modern society. Zoli is the heart and tool of this movement and ultimately becomes a kind of gypsy martyr that falls from the graces of her people and is eventually exiled from the traditions she cherishes to live a life of poverty on the run from the law and her people.

There is an old Romani song that says we share little pieces of our hearts with people and the further we go along, the less we have for ourselves until there is not enough left to go around and that’s called traveling, and it’s also called death, and since it happens to us all there’s nothing more ordinary than that.

Zoli becomes a ghost that ironically lives the true gypsy life. She comes close to death many times as she escapes angry locals, experiences sickness and starvation, gun wielding soldiers, and the intense cold of Eastern Europe. The lens she sees through becomes tarnished by her trust in no one. McCann shows all of her through the lives of many, making stylistic shifts in his writing that confuse and intrigue the reader while guiding us through the breadth of 20th and early 21st century Europe. And finally we are left at the end with a clandestine allegory that makes this novel spectacular.

Guerrilla Camera Phone #2

2009-12-21T20:58:00.012-07:00

Fittingly, I took this shot tonight which happens to be the darkest day of the year, the Winter Solstice. I was walking my dog in my neighborhood and found this graffiti under a light pole on a relatively new street. Just a few years ago this was a big open field.

Someone's desk.

Around 4 am in a NYC subway a few years ago, I saw and heard this woman doing a very moving version of U2's One. I remember hearing her sing across the tracks and noticing the unique sound of a voice and guitar in that environment - the reverberation sounded otherworldly, ghost-like. As the approaching train came, she began to fade into the oncoming noise until I couldn't hear her at all, yet I could still see her playing until the train pulled up and she disappeared completely. It was an amazing experience.

Guerrilla Camera Phone #1

2009-11-19T16:37:00.020-07:00

For roughly the last 10 years I’ve had jobs that take me all over Colorado’s front range. First it was electrical and now for the last 7 of those years it’s been IT work that’s put me anywhere from Pueblo to Cheyenne on a given day. And I’ve never failed to notice the uniqueness of the situation as I spend a lot of time driving, which I really enjoy, and being in different places that bring a constant influx of characters normal and not. On a good day it can be cathartic because the solitude and randomness allows me to come up with all kinds of ideas for stuff I like – music, writing, photography. The latter being particularly beneficial since the invention of the camera phone.

So since I’ve had a camera phone, I’ve been taking pictures of things that I think are, well, picture worthy in some way. Artistic, funny, ironic, evocative, or just plain cool looking. Even though most of the camera phones I’ve had tend, not surprisingly, to have shitty resolution and contrast quality – although they’re getting better – the inherent shittiness of the image can make for an added ‘guerrilla’ effect – like the photographer taking something on the move in an unorthodox fashion, a something that requires clandestine tactics. To hide my guerrilla picture taking, I’ve made fake coughs to disguise the shutter sound that comes from the phone, I’ve made it look like I’m texting, I’ve pretended my eyes are bad and held the phone at weird angles to make it look like I’m trying to read a message on the screen, and all while I’m ‘taking’ a picture of something that needed the action of ‘taking’ to be disguised. Of course, not all pictures need to be concealed, but the few that do require guerrilla strategies can be pretty fun and challenging to pull off.

A woman reading on a bus.

Some unusual graffiti under a bridge.

I think it was a modern day brothel - I guess they need internet and phones too! This place was creepy. I showed up and asked for the contact person and the lady that answered the door let me come in but locked me in this room while she went looking for the manager. You can see the daylight coming in through the metal door. Very weird.

Of Mice & a man

2009-11-05T16:28:00.021-07:00

Lately I’ve been having a problem with mice in my house. It’s nothing new and I’ve become accustomed to dealing with their occasional incursions over the years. In fact I’m used to all sorts of wildlife living with me on the eastern most outskirts of metro Denver. I literally live in the last urban neighborhood before the landscape abruptly becomes a prairie and as a result some of my neighbors include; deer, foxes, raccoons, prairie dogs, snakes, eagles, skunks, coyotes, owls, rabbits, hawks, some weird people that appear to live like animals, and of course, lots and lots of field mice.

Scratching on the outer side of walls and ceilings are the first tell tale signs of a mouse intrusion. This doesn’t bother me too much because they’re separated from my existence, so to speak, by some drywall and insulation. And they're easily killed by throwing some poison blocks and pellets into the attic and crawl space of my house. Only downside is if they die near the heating coils that run through the ceiling sheetrock, a bad smell lingers for about a week. This is one of many drawbacks of having electric radiant heat instead of a forced-air duct system. I suspect this and the poor efficiency of having heat come from the ceiling (heat rises right?) is the reason why radiant coils are so unpopular nowadays. Additional perks include stupidly high electricity costs and about five feet of insulation in my attic that’s perfect for mice looking for warmth in the cold months. This is all bad for sure, but once they decide to join me in my living space, I start to really get agitated. When I see mouse droppings – there are very few places a mouse cannot get into – and hear them running around and squeaking in adjacent rooms, I get super pissed! Plus those droppings have the strong potential of carrying Hantavirus – a nasty, nasty sickness that can potentially be fatal in rare cases – which is transmitted through their feces and urine, and can become airborne if the droppings aren’t sterilized before sweeping them up. Anyway, through the years I’ve used every kind of mouse extermination system possible, including the human exterminator man type. When I first had this problem and couldn’t get rid of the mice on my own as I was still an apprentice mouse killer, I called one of these companies to do it for me only to realize that all they did was put down glue traps that I could buy for a lot cheaper, and spray some kind of stuff along the wall, that as far as I could tell was good for one thing: Nothing. And since ‘Nothing’ was not the result I was hoping for, I took matters into my own hands.

First off, I never bought a glue trap because I saw the results from the one the exterminator left. Basically the mouse is going about his business when he mistakenly walks over one of these glue traps and is marooned there for the rest of his life. The mouse either starves to death, suffocates in glue, or in the case of the one in my house, is gnawed on by other mice! I remember being shocked that mice would eat one of their own. I felt so bad for this poor creature that was bloodied with bite marks and probably starving that I tried to get him out of the glue and save him, but as I tried and tried I realized that freeing him would’ve meant tearing him in two. So I decided to end his slow misery by killing him effectively and fast. I put him and the glue trap that was now a part of him forever in a plastic grocery bag and backed over it all with my truck.

Mouse traps are pretty effective, but for me, they increase my anxiety level in a bad way because the sound of traps snapping in another room and the sometimes loud crying squeak of a mouse that isn’t completely dead but severely injured bothers me to the extreme. I hate to see anything suffer; and I mean anything – insects, animals, people (although I must admit, my tolerance for extremely vile humans that suffer is a lot higher than any animal), and mice – basically anything with consciousness and the capacity to feel pain. Now don’t get me wrong here, I believe in the food chain and killing for food, raising livestock and even hunting is good to control animal populations. I have no problem with theses scenarios, as long as it’s done in a humane way where the creature being killed does not suffer or it’s at least minimized as much as possible. In my outlook nothing should have to suffer. When humans get a thrill out of suffering as in blood sports, recreational and trophy hunting, or torture; it is sadistic, evil, and about the worst thing a conscious being could do to another.

As I said earlier, I’ve used poison, which in uh, respect to the last paragraph is a complete hypocritical contradiction. The poison constricts blood vessels and eventually dehydrates the mouse. I feel bad for doing this and yet, I know the mouse feels a helluva lot worse! So why do I do it? Is it because I’m higher on the food chain or that I like to think I’m smarter than the mice by outsmarting them? Nope. And in fact I’m only smarter than them in a human-centered way. They’ve got me beat when it comes to their mousey intelligence employing superior olfactory sensitivity and ultrasonic hearing. So I guess the answer is; because I can kill; and I’ll do just about anything to rid my house of these innocent but annoying creatures. An embarrassing paradox for sure! The mice are just doing what they got to do, just like I go to work for money and then buy food. I’ve rationalized this to myself over and over, and always end up at the inhumane level of causing a fellow mammal to suffer a slow death. I think of Jack Kerouac living as a fire lookout in an elevated cabin in the mountains of Washington in his book, Desolation Angels. He had a mice problem too but couldn’t bring himself to kill them. He ended up just living with and tolerating it as a insignificant nuisance. Jack is more of a man than me because I just can’t afford to be competing for living space with mice even though there’s plenty of it for the both of us. I wrestle with this jacked up dichotomy of having two opposing opinions while laying out chunks of poison. I guess in the end, however bothered and tormented I may become, I’m just going to go with the best form of killing that’s most beneficial to myself.

However, just when this false sense of self was at its nadir, a pulsating LED beacon of hope guided me through the dark rows of rodent killing mechanisms in the aisles of Home Depot. Yes, at the end of the rainbow was a Mouse Chaser. And “no,” the hardware outlet had not started selling cats. In all my years as a journeyman mouse slayer, I’d never heard or seen anything like this before! So maybe I wasn’t the pro I’d been thinking I was and had just become routinely blind through my monotonous genocidal behavior. Clearly I hadn’t taken any continuing education courses in rodent killing lately because this box seemed like it was something out of the future – even though it kinda resembled an air freshener. Basically this little device plugs into an outlet and functions by sending out continuous ultrasonic sound waves that are annoyingly ear shattering to mice. It’s like a dog whistle in that humans can’t hear it (neither can dogs and cats. The package says only small rodents can hear its shriek.) and instead of drawing a dog to the whistler, it chases the mice away to a radius of 2k sq ft. Awesome! So after spending 25 bucks, I have this magic box that will give me and the mice some peace of mind. If this thing does what it says I’ll be able to get my conscious back – hopefully.

Footprints From The Day Before - Very Short Fiction

2009-10-06T13:55:00.004-06:00

Face and city reflected in the stars through glass. The dishwasher lulls to sleep. Walls fade to foam, the trees turn to oceans. In whispers and hum. On the pink edge of haloed sky churning and blaring safety from soapy waters crashing inside its factory. Isotropic. Refineries sweating and bloated blending currents dusty, aged quiet, footprints from the day before. The hovering swarm attacks and sleeps with frequencies. To the soft silence. In the soft silence. Movement. In the black between reflections, the sight of an escape. To the shadows deep within molecular clouds under water where no stars are seen. No importance. No power. Out there is inside brains, infinities captured by the humming lullaby. Pleasing painless aloof. Branches extending into wind, into clouds, mountaintops and ghettos, rain breathing capital to the binding fulcrum, dripping to roots, to soil. Evaporation. Reflected in eyes and hands wrapped in discipline and vacations.

Washing the face under cold water. Nothing. The known shock dripping off the nose. Under eyelids, the mirror image of the self-reflection laced with imaginations seen before. Somewhere. Like that fucking train, the faraway moan and wail tending senses that long for someone else’s purpose. Loneliness that resides inside the barren desert scarred by train tracks across you, and the ways that have been seen, and will become. The thick sap of bullshit seeping from these words. The difference between Saturday and Monday. Your world inside the dishwasher. Time and the meaning of life and the pursuit of pleasure. Its humor. The unreal that populates the echoed loops I see and think through. Filters, the blue sky, the mountains. Don’t care. Green pastures, rain and hail pelting your things. Its happiness. Silence, why? Stories and stories to poems to words that point to silence.

Particles, bits of food part consumed, washing, washing. Static and snow. Decorations inside industrial machinery underneath dim fluorescence, cracked spines that light recognition. Feedback. Revolving circadian rhythms walking, fearing, sleeping, cheering. Entertainment, Farming, Reverberating. Edible displays fucking spaces of hypnotized assets; beings merchandise. Hearing, seeing, overstepping tracks of futures, from the day before. Transparent. The paths of airplanes into stars. Porn with love from love. Museums under shoes of the masses. And electrocuted moths with pavement. Separation. Nighttime dreams that radiate in morning antitwilight shadows of colors speaking against bloodshot eyes of shift workers’ diluted residence in waning incandescence. Value. Influence recycled into air, into wires, into ordinary blood bleeding everywhere. All over. Flowers from fossils growing higher and beyond the ceilings, towers, orbits, and time, to abstractions, freedom, majorities, and excess. Gone. Disappeared under the weight of footprints existing, only nowhere.

The Fiction Bookshelf #2

2009-09-23T19:15:00.012-06:00

The Song Is You - Arthur Phillips

The critically lauded Arthur Phillips and his fourth novel, The Song Is You, is a 21^st century meditation on love and music that washes the reader in poetic prose and imagery, but ultimately amounts to ‘old wine in a new bottle’ or for me, just plain old bullshit.

Phillips’ writing is amazingly good, and it’s on constant display throughout. He’s a natural at writing prose that’s poetic and effective. Much of the praise this novel has amassed is due in part to his skillful writing that weaves narration and description into characters that perfectly fit between the covers of this book. The dialog feels real and fits his character’s mindsets without overindulging the author’s mission to communicate their raison d’etre. However, the dialog alone cannot keep this book afloat for me while the story drowns deeper and deeper into the quicksand of romantic mushiness.

Dialog on display: A conversation between a detective and Cait O’Dwyer, the Irish pop singer that propels half the book.

“I’m performing on Thursday night. Do you think I’ll be in danger from that dirtbag?”
“Difficult to say. I’m not psychic. But if you’re inviting me to the show, I’ll think I’ll pass.” She nodded twice – he finally landed a jab after all her swings – but she quickly laughed.
“I wasn’t. You have to work late, solving a nice murder?”
“No. No excuse. I just don’t necessarily think I’ll see the best of you under those circumstances. Pop music, you know.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“I think you know that what you do is temporary. Cheap. It’s for kids. I understand – a person’s got to make a living. I don’t think less of you for doing that to pay your rent. But it’s not the most interesting part of you by a mile.”
“And you can see the most interesting part?"
“If your job was dressing up as rabbit in a theme park, would you want me to come visit you and pretend you were a real rabbit? I hope you’re laughing because you see how right-on the comparison is. You go sing; I’d worry if you really thought it was a big deal.”

The story follows a middle aged commercial artist named Julian that once had high ambitions of creating meaningful art, but is now broken of his younger dreams by the death of his two year-old son and subsequent failed marriage. On a snowy night in New York City, he finds himself in a bar watching the aforementioned Cait O’Dwyer sing with her band. Somewhat impressed, he buys her demo CD and eventually transfers it to his iPod. Through the MP3 player her music comes alive and seems to speak to him personally in a special way that ignites his passion for Cait and for life again. As Julian is already a musical junkie that’s always plugged into the world that his iPod contains, Cait’s music inspires him to become a fan in a shadowy, deceptive way that’s usually called stocking. He contacts her via cryptic notes scribbled on beer coasters and online forums that eventually piques her reciprocated interest in him and fuels her creativity. And so the story plays out with the two following, stalking, and playing a game of tease and chase that ultimately comes to an unsatisfactory end. While the end generally does avoid clichés in an expected way; it’s nothing new to trade an expected ending for a less expected but equally banal finale.

One funny thing about this book, is that it’s completely contemporary right now, but in the future it will fade and age into a period piece like, Hemingway’s, A Farewell To Arms. Whether this is intentional, I don’t know, but while I read of websites, cell phones, text messaging, usernames, emails, web forums, iPods, search engines; it makes me kind of chuckle because it will date the book just like the music Cait seems to passionately sing will date her like the real singers she reminds me of. Think; Jewel, Paula Cole, Joan Osborne. Like the detective’s words above, it’s temporary music – especially so when compared to Janis Joplin, Patti Smith, Ani DiFranco; artists that exude longevity.

The story ain’t bad, but what hurts this novel even more is the believability of the characters and their actions. The genres of Fantasy and Magical Realism are not present here, but I feel that I’ve been lied to when I read this in the supposed realistic setting of present day America. One can tell the truth in so many ways, but when there’s a connection that seems not to fit very well, forcing the truth comes off as tripped up and ultimately a lie. Validity escapes reality and succumbs to a world of spectacle that is more fit for an average dramatic movie. In fact I think this story would work better as a movie than a book. Give it to the Coen Brothers and I’m sure once they inject it with their trademark dry wit and irony, and adapt the already good dialog, a fine movie would result. But that’s not a reality. Yet Phillips’ way of telling a tale of lost and found love has garnered him critical fame as a great writer – which is true of his prose – but for me, the pretty writing just serves a mediocre story that is shallow and empty. I’ll give Arthur Phillips another chance one day, but for now he’s going to have to go to the back of the line and wait a long time!

Dirt and Dark - Very Short Fiction

2009-09-21T09:05:00.008-06:00

On blood and concrete the body. Fear. The body, a vanishing point on the horizon.

Under the summer night of street light, old buildings; hardened like the city that made its needs and torment. It was built to collapse inward from its own weight of thought, NoIse, instinct, QuIet. Now. From clenched fists, from boots, from 4 soldiers of the zeitgeist, imbuing ethos into already rubbled debris. The city runs away from the defeated mind; the body laying in its shadow of/and the slow fade to nothing. To death, final freedom, to Being gone and away.

Years

Working. The body works for others. Against.

Awake/Alive on the inside of all things - simulacrum, concrete ambitions of money to end. Patterns of power and The paradigm. Places on the outside living in dreams of carved out geometry of childhoods, or Being lost and home at once in the vacancy of mental illness. So it would seem To Be, wandering dirt roads and clouds at sunrise lawless of will, of the vibrant emptiness that is dark of knowledge and waking reality. Asleep 1/3rd. Gone and away from infinite desire. From pleasure. From diversion. From the taste of blood and the anxiety of need. The body leaves the city inside its reflection; climbing out for years, gone. Being.

Away, in dirt and dark. Walking

Music Archive 6: Into Some Musical Vandalism

2009-08-23T10:12:00.007-06:00

Oh yes, it's time for another episode of; Stafford's lost B-side demo material! First off, we've got a nice electronic-metal type of gem or maybe just plain old pyrite called Vandals that incorporates some cool drum machine programming, screaming, and digitized guitar to make for a noisy, harsh bonanza of joy and pain. In the second half, there's a nice Floydian dreamy song that could possibly sooth the previously offended ear drums and incite incense burning that's called, Into - "into what?" you ask; well hell if I know, that's just as far as I got with the title. Both were recorded around '00 with a guy named Ted handling the drumming duties on Into and myself on the rest of the stuff.

Vandals '00

Into-edit '00

Early Morning Balloons - Very Short Fiction

2009-08-09T20:52:00.003-06:00

From night are stars shining through. Ancient light in a wash of unknowing black. The AM that is young, naïve; follows no heart. Unshaped, beautiful; the born mind knows no imbalance, distraction. From time and place, the beginning of one Being each other. The same. Self. Under the lens of big, open skies that cradle the infant new. It is faint, weak, barely there, at once powerful in it’s distant burning. Signs; waves of color that touch the soft calm. Vast, twilight scattered, cool. And shadows begin; symmetry, form, the coming of day; the path has been crossed. The black will fade to Sun, the faithful stars will go in hiding veils.

Breathing sky. I and the flamed horizon. Places. Light, set in vision. Upward to stars and planets framed in books. Upward to pilots navigating balloons in morning brisk. Solid determined, young flights. Places found in the room of me. In a time. A recollection of past. Soaring hot air balloons that are breathed into, upward in colors, in slow steps above fields and hills. They move graceful, placid. They are morning dreams of I, against big music that propels the windless navigation. Moving everywhere at once, the scene explodes in every direction, every path, every possibility. The music is slow, quiet, at times it is silence.

Teenage Visionary

2009-06-24T10:05:00.007-06:00

Didn’t know his name, but I knew mine. He was the 14 year-old son of the owner of a small business that was moving, and I was doing some telecom work for them. While I was messing with wires and computers, this kid was moving some boxes and file cabinets around when I surprisingly initiated a conversation with him. Earlier he had been talking about all kinds of music – offering up a plethora of his CDs for the rest of the office staff to listen to while everyone worked at moving furniture, cleaning, and relocating IT systems. This instantly reminded me of myself at that age, or even sometimes now when I get excited about an artist or group and start exacerbating on the history through beginnings, to personnel changes, to solo albums, the reunions, and to the inevitable legal wranglings that come later when they’re dried up and sue happy. He had been giving everyone the run down on all the CDs contained in his case – if anyone was still listening to him, it was mostly out of polite pity as they were really just waiting for him to stop talking. Most people were preoccupied with the tasks at hand and just wanted some background noise or musical wallpaper like soft rock or new country radio stations, or a vacuum. I know this feeling well. The feeling of informing and educating the woefully ignorant; the feeling of not being listened to and getting sweet smiles and a nice pat on the head for the efforts. The feeling of being told, “something nice, and not too harsh” which translates to, “something that is bland enough to be absorbed by the walls, something we can pleasantly ignore and not notice.” I felt for him. And, I think that’s why I asked him if he played. “Oh yeah!” he said, “drums and guitar but mostly drums.” Since I was the only one in the vicinity that expressed any interest as to what he was saying, he immediately started talking about all the bands he was into and his friends that he jammed with. When I told him that I also played, we started trading little anecdotes on guitar tunings, concerts, and of course; classic Death Metal bands of yesteryear. And while this particular style was never my thing, I know enough about the genre to pass for a slightly less than die-hard fan. He was rattling off bands and eras and record labels and sub-genres like he was teaching an AP class on the stuff. It was amazing and really fun talking to him! In fact, I learned that the Sandoval family is prominent in the L.A. Death scene, and that South American bands are a lot of times made up of families that help each other out in their cooperative Metal world. The kid was awesome. And he taught me enough to pass as an informed die-hard fan, plus his enthusiasm was infectious because I wanted to go home and rock out on guitar!

At the point when I had finished my job and had to go, I shook his hand and told him to “keep playing.” That was about all I could say without sounding like a pretentious old wise man – the kind of older people that will tell a young person what the world has in store for them, giving advice from their experiences while forgetting what it’s like to be young and unencumbered by all the shit that they’re warning about. I didn’t and don’t ever want to be one of those people, but admittedly it’s hard not to give some advice because I felt like I walked into a time warp of sorts. What I wanted to say but ultimately kept to myself was; “Keep playing no matter what. No matter what. When you get a girlfriend and fall in love, when you start wondering about drugs and sex, when you get a job that takes all your time away, when you leave home and struggle with money. With all the harsh and beautiful realities of the world it’s important to have a passion to keep all to your self – something that no one can ever fuck with, no matter what.” If I had said all that, he would’ve blown me off; I know this because I would have too. Just a simple, “Keep playing” was enough. Although I hoped he would understand what I meant or could read my mind in some way, I knew he couldn’t and that’s fine because he probably wouldn’t quite get it anyway – he’s naïve and free, and he’s in a period of his life that is amazingly vast with possibilities, a period that most adults miss and strive to get back but never will because they know too much. The most we adults can now ask of a situation like this, is to shut up and listen, and enjoy somebody else’s moment.

The Non-Fiction Bookshelf #3

2009-06-05T10:41:00.005-06:00

Consider The Lobster - David Foster Wallace

Last September while indulging in my morbid and somewhat weird fascination with mortality, I was perusing the ‘Recent Deaths’ page of Wikipedia, which is basically a large obituary of formerly living entities of note. It seems like I always find someone that I knew of in the month of death that’s reported. September ’08 was no different, as I was surprised to see a writer that I admired had succumb to the almost clichéd artistic death of suicide. The Wikipedia entry was something like; David Foster Wallace, 46, American author and essayist, suicide by hanging. After being taken aback by my grim discovery, I decided to reread and read some recent stuff by this quirky, intelligent, and super funny writer.

First on the Wallace book list was the brilliant, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. A book of essays that were written for journals like, Harper’s and The New Yorker, with topics ranging from his adolescent dreams of becoming a pro tennis player, the Illinois State Fair, a vacation on a cruise ship (where the book gets its title), and 20th century French philosophy. In fact, I had so much fun rereading it, I decided to go out and buy his last book of essays entitled, Consider The Lobster. And I would say that this is his best non-fiction work that I’ve read, because it has all the hallmarks of Wallace’s style; slang and funny anecdotal cussing, knowledge and intelligence that some considered to be show-off like, enormous amounts of footnotes that sometimes take on a parallel life of their own outside the standard text, a cocky coolness that is embedded in the book that only an over educated long haired dude can communicate without rubbing the reader’s nose in it, and a penchant for using rare and exotic words that should be listed in a glossary because looking them up in a dictionary gets old and just reminds us lesser mortals how inferior we are to his vocabulary. But I swear, it’s a great read! These attributes only add to his originality and make for joyous reading – except for his detractors it’s probably like being lectured while getting a root canal or something.

Consider The Lobster’s essays span the spectrum from gross to sad to funny. Host documents a few days in the life of late night talk radio host, John Ziegler’s brand of living and philosophy, Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed is pretty self explanatory, Up, Simba follows John McCain on the 2000 republican primary route, Big Red Son explains the allure and banality of porn and its Oscar themed Vegas award show, The View From Mrs. Thompson’s is a poignant reflection of 9/11 from mid-western America, Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky is a portrait of a tireless Dostoevsky biographer mixed in with Wallace’s love for the 19th century author, Consider The Lobster finds Wallace at the Maine Lobster Festival writing an article for a gourmet food magazine weighing the pleasure of taste versus live boiling of crustaceans, Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think is about the lack of quality in John Updike’s recent fiction opposed to his great works, Authority and American Usage is Wallace’s love affair with dictionaries and American slang, and How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart finds him tracing various tennis stars’ retirements.

A first class book of essays from a now dead but still great artist. One that possessed talent, originality, curiosity, intelligence, and skill that manifested him into a modern day polymath. Despite being successful in his chosen field the burden of living overcame and swallowed him and deprived the world of his unique work.

From Up Simba:

If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.

On Franz Kafka’s Funniness:

And it is this, I think, that makes Kafka’s wit inaccessible to children whom our culture has trained to see jokes as entertainment and entertainment as reassurance.* It’s not that students don’t “get” Kafka’s humor but that we’ve taught them to see humor as something you get – the same way we’ve taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle.

* There are probably whole Johns Hopkins U. Press books to be written on the lallating function that humor serves in today’s US psyche. A crude way to put the whole thing is that our present culture is, both developmentally and historically, adolescent. And since adolescence is acknowledged to be the single most stressful and frightening period of human development – the stage when the adulthood we claim to crave begins to present itself as a real and narrowing system of responsibilities and limitations (taxes, death) and when we yearn inside for a return to the same childish oblivion we pretend to scorn – it’s not difficult to see why we as a culture are so susceptible to art and entertainment whose primary function is escape, i.e. fantasy, adrenaline, spectacle, romance, etc. Jokes are a kind of art, and because most of us Americans come to art now essentially to escape ourselves – to pretend for a while that we’re not mice and walls are parallel and the cat can be outrun – it’s understandable that most of us are going to view “A Little Fable” as not all that funny, or maybe even see it as a repulsive instance of the exact sort of downer-type death-and-taxes reality for which “real” humor serves as a respite.

Together In One - Very Short Fiction

2009-05-25T19:11:00.005-06:00

I will be.

Or else this room. This being and place of rest; sweating reprieve from toil and pursuit. This middle. Factory break room of all. And me, inside them. The common river in the nightshift of desert plains. Coming to mid-point idle, dinners and lunches. In trance and slow passage to bitter aging meanness, we sit and eat, and stare. Out windows into street light and dark. Windows that sieve light, that reflect half in mirror, looking inside this room - fluorescent haze and night. Breathing inside this work of power and content; the calm anxiety. Breathing in the medium room of adulthood, sailing away in vessels on oceans never to return – to die in the waters, murdered by dreams, against purgatory rooms. I, and my opaque reflection in glass. To disappear in things, into a dark star. Invisible, restless.

Marley & Me: The Horror

2009-05-08T18:55:00.009-06:00

By the time I reached the end of this movie, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I heard Marlon Brando echo, “the horror… the horror” during the last scenes of this PG rated family film. Instead, it was me.

A few weekends ago, my girlfriend and I decided to stay home and make it a movie night. I’ve always preferred this because it’s comparatively cheap as opposed to going out and it suits my introverted-reclusive-social-anxiety disorder perfectly. So we ordered our Chinese food, went to the liquor store, and visited the local video store. The deal is we each get to pick one movie that we both have to watch. While it’s not exactly democratic, it is a good way to forgo the timely and arduous process that’s called compromise. My pick was a nugget of early ‘90s HBO youth; The Hunt For Red October. Hers was the recent comedy-drama, cutesy dog flick; Marley & Me. In which I replied, “Hell no! I’m not watching some puppy movie where the dog dies at the end!”

“But, it’s supposed to be really funny! And besides, you don’t get a say because I have to watch your, Hunt For The Red Boats or whatever.”

The point was taken, although not lightly because I immediately had visions of watching Old Yeller and Where The Red Fern Grows, and to put it mildly, not reacting very well at all upon the conclusions of these past horrors. I tried to suggest other movies; I tried to bargain with her; I tried to forfeit my pick in exchange for two movies of her choice just as long as they didn’t involve dogs dying in them. No dice; there would be none of it. Her mind was made up and I had to go along. It was a decision that warranted extra provisions from the liquor store.
And so we watched it. And I hated it. And I cried harder at the end (you know, when the dog dies) more than any other movie. And I have to ask: Why would anyone want to watch this movie? Yes, it has great moments of fun, families, and comedy, but to see an old dog get euthanized at the end!? I know it provides a fairly accurate snapshot of the ups and downs of life and blah blah blah, but come on! The dog will die, and we the viewers seem to know this inevitability will happen by the time the credits roll – which makes it hard for someone like me (who mostly prefers animals [especially dogs] to humans in real life) to enjoy any other portion of the movie. In my world, Marley & Me should be rated X for disturbing content.

Exhausted from the sob-fest, my girlfriend decided to call it a night and head off to bed, breaking the two movie rule, but I understood. I on the other hand, decided to dilute the pain by opening a fresh bottle of wine and well, let’s just say the bottle didn’t leave my side until it was bone dry. The family friendly dog movie that millions embraced left me a slobbering, drunken fool sitting on my couch watching the next movie through puffy eyes, just waiting to pass out.

Music Archive 5: Night Of The Seeds

2009-04-23T22:32:00.004-06:00

It's not that or some cheese horror thing; it's a song called Jerome's Night Out that I did back in '97. It's just an acoustic thing that documents a part of the Neil Simon movie, Biloxi Blues, where the main character, Jerome attempts to get drunk, loose his virginity, and fall in love, all in the same night of leave from basic training in 1945 war time America. I tried to say all that in a short song. The other thing is called Seeds, which is a sample of a rockin type thing that I did in '01 with Shawn on drums.

Jerome's Night Out '97

Seeds '01 - edit

The Fiction Bookshelf #1

2009-04-09T11:45:00.011-06:00

So now I’ve decided to make a another ramshackle list of books that I’ve read and liked enough to write about and recommend. I started a similar list for Non-Fiction books a few months back which included any and all reasons to do such a thing – if you missed out on all the action, you can read the first post here.

This list will be comprised of Fiction that’s made me want to read more and more; thus perpetuating a happy vicious cycle that I think is mostly healthy. You see, when I was a kid, I watched a shitload of TV. So much that I’ve no need for it anymore because when one measures things in ‘Shitloads’ it tends to be a lot. Maybe I’ve been trying to make up for all those TV years with the reading that’s taken its place – even though a good philosophical argument could be had as to whether reading is actually more beneficial. Depends on the person I guess – maybe Snobs vs. Sods. But this person really does get a genuine kick out of it, as it’s engaging, peaceful, and evocative in ways that generate a continuous appetite for the stuff! Anyway, first up...

The Executioner’s Song – Norman Mailer

This book is massive. As it has 1,056 pages, it is both massive in an encyclopedic and weight sense. I suspect some would bog down, not finish it, and more usefully make a door stop or booster chair out of it. It’s also massive in more important historical ways. The Executioner’s Song is the true story of Gary Gilmore, who spent most of his life in prison and was finally executed in 1977. The book starts with Gilmore’s parole and his attempt to reconnect with his guarded family in Utah. The reader follows as he tries to reestablish himself in a society that makes no sense to him. He is hopeless in so many ways that one would feel sorry for him if he wasn’t such an asshole. Norman Mailer portrays Gilmore as a man that makes short sighted and shabby efforts to live a normal life but is offset and eventually betrayed by his inability to understand denial. Despite being intelligent and articulate, he lacks qualities that seem to be innate to most, in that he has no understanding of his relationship to others and the consequences his behavior produces. He is selfish and egocentric to the core producing an evil aspect that Mailer expertly portrays.

A passage about Gary Gilmore and his tormented girlfriend, Nicole Baker.

With her eyes closed, she had the odd feeling of an evil presence near her that came from Gary. She found it kind of half agreeable. Said to herself, Well, if he is the devil, maybe I want to get closer. It wasn’t a terrifying sensation so much as a strong and strange feeling, like Gary was a magnet and had brought down a lot of spirits on himself.

Midway though the book, Gilmore murders two innocent people, is arrested and sent back to prison. Eventually convicted of the crimes, Gilmore gets caught up in moral and philosophical battles from opposing sides of the legal spectrum. He becomes a media sensation as he fights for his right to die, because at the time of the murders there was no death penalty in the U.S. Gilmore fights judges, governors, Mormons, publishing agents, journalists, and lawyers in a postmodern media circus for his chance to become the first man killed in America’s newly reinstated death penalty. He serves as the ‘executioner.'

An interview between Gilmore and a journalist.

Interviewer: Your I.Q.’s supposedly about 130, and yet you’ve spent almost 19 of the past 22 years behind bars. Why were you never able to get away with anything?

Gilmore: I got away with a couple of things. I ain’t a great thief. I’m impulsive. Don’t plan, don’t think. You don’t have to be a superintelligent to get away with shit, you just have to think. But I don’t. I’m impatient. Not greedy enough. I could have gotten away with lots of things that I got caught for. I don’t, ah, really understand it. Maybe I quit caring a long time ago.

What’s amazing to me is that a novel came out of all this. One that won its author the Pulitzer Prize for the second time. Mailer is one of the originators of, ‘The New Journalism' which is a way to tell a factual story in a fictive structure. Mailer assembled this book over the course of two years by sifting through interviews, court transcripts, newspapers, and interviewing almost all of the people involved himself. The story is a solid read in that it gives the reader a true sense and honest portrait of the characters involved as well as the period. Mailer has an invisible style that never intrudes into the narrative with his opinion, but rather populates the multifaceted landscape of an American tale with this unique document.

Geraldo Made Me Watch TV And Listen To Mercyful Fate: Part 3

2009-03-28T10:28:00.023-06:00

Part: III

Mercyful Fate

"Evil" from Melissa

A recent TV spot with former guitarist, Michael Denner

"A Dangerous Meeting" from Don't Break The Oath

The Belt of Venus

2009-03-17T14:33:00.008-06:00

I’ve always had a affinity for early morning. It’s quiet and serene, and I seem to be in the best mood of the day during the morning twilight. Part of this is the beauty of the sky transitioning from night to day in relatively quick phases that produce all kinds of cool phenomena. One of those phenomena is called, The Belt of Venus.

Looking west during sunrise

‘The belt’ is a pinkish ring that’s also called the antisolar arch. It surrounds the horizon from the outer points of the rising or setting sun and is most visible directly opposite of the sun just after it sets or just before it rises with little or no clouds. The pink color of the belt is the reflection of the setting or rising sun on the other side of the horizon. And the reason sunsets and sunrises are more red than blue is because the sun’s light is farther away during twilight, which makes the light more reddened with longer wavelengths because it has to pass through more layers of atmosphere.

Looking east during sunset

The dark part underneath the pink belt is called the antisolar wedge. This is the actual shadow of the Earth reflected back onto the atmosphere.

In my opinion, The Belt of Venus has always been underrated when compared to the rising or setting sun. It’s all part of the same phenomena, but knowing why the sky turns colorful will surely impress any date. So lets all give the Belt of Venus its long overdue viewing and knowing and go out and see it!

James Wood vs. Don DeLillo

2009-03-06T12:35:00.021-07:00

James Wood

vs.

Don DeLillo

Now here’s a real problem; a British literary critic whom I greatly admire, one James Wood, publishes an essay on why he doesn’t like a novel called, Underworld, by one of my favorite authors, the American novelist Don DeLillo. And that pesky rub is somewhere between the two, because I really like DeLillo’s book, while Wood’s 12 page critique of it, is an accurate and dead-on review that would make any fan of literature nod their head in one way or another. The facts: Underworld was first published in 1997 and James Wood’s essay entitled, Against Paranoia: The Case of Don DeLillo, was published in The New Republic shortly thereafter. Both the novel and essay are brilliantly crafted pieces that give the reader unexpected insights into the world around us. And no, I’m not kidding or being gratuitous when I say that.

Corner #1

James Wood
Born 1965; Durham, UK
Wood has published three books of criticism and one novel. He is a writer for the New Yorker and has written for The Guardian and The New Republic. He teaches at Harvard and Columbia Universities.

Corner #2

Don DeLillo
Born 1936; New York City, USA
DeLillo has written 15 novels and three plays. He’s won a National Book Award and a PEN/Faulkner Award. Underworld was voted the second most important work of fiction in the last 25 years by The New York Times.

Round 1

Wood ~

To call Underworld, Don DeLillo’s large novel, a failure, might seem an act of slightly flirtatious irrelevance. The book is so large, so serious, so ambitious, so often well written, so punctually intelligent, that it produces its own antibodies and makes criticism a small germ. Moreover, Don DeLillo’s huge endeavor represents a promise to restock the novel’s wasting pedigree in our age, and few want to see the promise broken. It is easy, and rightly so, for big books to flush away criticism. But DeLillo’s novel, despite chapters of great brilliance, does not gather its local victories as a book this large should. Instead, it enforces relations between its parts which it cannot coax. Curiously, it is at once distractingly centrifugal and dogmatically centripetal: its many characters dissolve an intensity which the novel insists on repeating.

Some background:

Underworld is the story of the kind of history that influences our lives in monumental ways. That being our personal history; things like, birth place, parents, siblings, school, environment, friends, romantic counterparts, and of course all this sets against the history we all know; JFK, Vietnam, Civil Rights, the Cold War. The book starts in 1951 with the “Shot Heard Around the World” in baseball when Bobby Thomson hit a homerun for a New York Giants victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers. Simultaneously the USSR makes its “shot” when it detonates its first atomic bomb in Kazakhstan. Underworld takes us on a journey from then to the late 1990’s in which we follow Thomson’s baseball that in reality was never found, but here its ownership changes over the next 50 years frequently. Every person to come in contact with the ball is a character along with others including, a Jesuit nun, a New York graffiti artist, a Kazakh medical ward, a conceptual artist, a waiter, and fictionalized versions of real characters; J. Edgar Hoover, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, and most significantly, Lenny Bruce. The book follows a non-linear narrative that goes back and forth in time through the years of the Cold War.

Round 2

DeLillo talking about his book in an interview ~

The last half century has been an enormously complex period – a strange spin-out experience, filled with danger and change. The novel is a very open form. It will accommodate large themes and whole landscapes of experience. The novel is here, the novel exists to give us a form that is fully equal to the sweeping realities of a given period. The novel expands, contracts, becomes essay-like, floats in pure consciousness – it gives the writer what he needs to produce a book that duplicates, a book that models the rich, dense, and complex weave of actual experience. The novel goads the writer into surpassing himself… And it occurs to me that this is what the writer does to transcend the limitations of his background. He does it though language, obviously. He writes himself into the larger world. He opens himself to the entire culture.

Round 3

Wood ~

Don DeLillo is a serious artist whose pointed stewardship of the novel in our culture and pleasure in the chafe of fictional language are cherishable. But his very defensiveness of the novel leads him, as far as one can see, into a philosophy of history which may weaken the novel, and into a battle with the culture which the novel can only lose. Again, the problem is that DeLillo veers toward a complicity with the very culture he wants to defend the novel against. Yet DeLillo’s struggle with the anaconda of postmodern America, if not his personal theory of that struggle, is representative of much American writing since 1960, when Philip Roth famously argued that American reality was more vivid, and hence more fictional, than American fiction. DeLillo is not isolate; where Underworld fails, it fails collegiately.

Round 4

Underworld
page; 446

In cities you build a language of circumspection and tact, a thousand little intimations, the nuance that has a shimmer of rubbed bronze. Then you go to the wilderness and become undone, lapsing into babble, eating mushroom caps that implode your brain, that make you preternaturally aware and afraid, turn you into an Aztec bird.
Matt Shay sat in the terminal of the airport in Tucson and listened to announcements bouncing off the walls.
He was thinking about his paranoid episode at the bombhead party the night before. He felt he’d glimpsed some horrific system of connections in which you can’t tell the difference between a soup can and a car bomb, because they are made by the same people in the way and ultimately refer to the same thing.
There was a garbage strike in New York.
There was a man being paged known only as Jack.
A woman with an accent said to someone seated next to her, “I so-call fell in love with him the day he paint my walls.”
There was a man in a wheelchair eating a burrito.

Round 5

Wood ~

What is striking is how many paranoid people there are in Underworld, and how this multitude drives so many perforations of unreality into the book’s form that its truths come to seem ragged and uncertain, while its untruths have an airy consistency… Such an agglomeration of paranoid people makes the reader weary about discrimination, and thus deprives this novel of one of fiction’s great goads. Paranoia must necessarily do this to fiction, for it silences judgment. One might call this the logic of pampered ignorance. If what you start out from is what you do not know, this is an infinitely extendable mystical spectrum. One can always not know more. Paranoia approaches knowledge from behind, so that anything can be connected with anything. It is dogmatic occultism. Yet fiction’s task is to show where connections seem to end, the better for their vivid spread.

Round 6

Underworld
page; 301

You withhold the deepest things from those who are closest and then talk to a stranger in a numbered room.

page; 778

It was dark and quiet now and he went up the narrow street toward his building but then swung into a gateway on an impulse and went down the steps and into the yards.
There was no light in the outer passage and he felt along the walls for the door that led inside. He smelled wet stone where the super had hosed the floors. He went inside and walked past the furnace room to the door at the end of the passage.
He still felt uneasy about the basement room, about the needle and strap and spoon, but it was passing little by little into faded time, half lost in the weave of a thousand things.

Page; 803

Most of our longings go unfulfilled. This is the word’s wistful implication – a desire for something lost or fled or otherwise out of reach.
In Phoenix now, with the years blowing by, I take a drive sometimes out past the regimented typeface on the map…

Closing Arguments

Don DeLillo is an amazingly talented writer and I have no problem calling him a genius. However in my view, Underworld is not his best work, yet it stands near the top of a skinny mountain that is the best of contemporary fiction. Of DeLillo’s work that stand above Underworld are; The Names, White Noise, The Body Artist, and Mao II.
Literary Criticism is something that I’ve really enjoyed reading the past few years. It can give insight and understanding of literature that’s not always immediately apparent, and in turn, criticism can add to the evocative nature of the works it analyzes. James Wood is a fairly recent find for me. Out of the very few critics that I like, he is the best because he seems to possess an almost ESP-like ability to break things down and render them comprehensible to the layman while adding his own touch of resonance.

Round 7

Wood ~

Naturally enough, DeLillo has his own American anxiety; you cannot have the calm growl of a Tolstoy in late-twentieth-century America, nor should you. But the paranoid vision incorporates a certain restless despair that makes the creation of rounded individual characters impossible. Paranoia acts as a falsely religious stimulant, to both novelists and their characters. Thus it is that DeLillo fights history with the religion of the novel, and speaks of the novel as “fanaticism, with elements of obsession, superstition and awe” – an extraordinary inversion of the sober nineteenth-century legacy, and a superstitious cul-de-sac for the novel. Living in America, inheriting a dread that American reality is too powerful for American fiction, he responds by crawling very close to an outright denial of reality’s groundedness, while exaggerating the strength of fiction’s potential resistance to that reality. If Tolstoy fought superstition with the daylight of realism, DeLillo merely fights superstition with a new superstition. He fights the religion of history with religion of fiction.

Round 8

Underworld
Page; 827

And you can glance out the window for a moment, distracted by the sound of small kids playing a made-up game in a neighbor’s yard, some kind of kickball maybe, and they speak in your voice, or piggy-back races on the weedy lawn, and it’s your voice you hear, essentially, under the glimmerglass sky, and you look at the things in the room, offscreen, unwebbed, the tissued grain of the deskwood alive in the light, the thick lived tenor of things, the argument of things to be seen and eaten, the apple core going sepia in the lunch tray, and the dense measures of experience in a random glance, the monk’s candle reflected in the slope of the phone, hours marked in Roman numerals, and the glaze of the wax, and the curl of the braided wick, and the chipped rim of the mug that holds your yellow pencils, skewed all crazy, and the plied lives of the simplest surface, the slabbed butter melting on the crumbled bun, and the yellow of the yellow of the pencils, and you try to imagine the word on the screen becoming a thing in the world, taking all its meanings, its sense of serenities and contentments out into the streets somehow, its whisper of reconciliation, a word extending itself ever outward, the tone of agreement or treaty, the tone of repose, the sense of mollifying silence, the tone of hail and farewell, a word that carries the sunlit ardor of an object deep in drenching noon, the argument of binding touch, but it’s only a sequence of pulses on a dullish screen and all it can do is make you pensive – a word that spreads a longing through the raw sprawl of the city and out across the dreaming bourns and orchards to the solitary hills.

Music Archive 4: Sci-fi Desolation

2009-02-25T10:11:00.005-07:00

Both of these songs were recorded around '00 or '01 with varying degrees of success. The short sample of Desolation Peak is a song I wrote about the book, Desolation Angels by, Jack Kerouac. It tells the story of him working as a fire lookout on a mountain in Washington. During his time up there, he wrote about his travels and his loneliness on the mountain, which he called 'Desolation Peak' and the other fire lookouts that he referred to as 'Angels' that watched over the 'Void'. Looking back, I think my lyrics are a little cheesy, but I still like the piano melody. Parades I like a lot, even though it was recorded badly. I had fun doing it because it has so many parts to it, and it's kinda like sci-fi meets the back porch with lyrics about the "parades" of traffic during morning rush hours.

Desolation Peak - edit

Parades

My Favorite Singers

2009-02-16T00:53:00.024-07:00

A list in no order whatsoever of some of my favorite singers. Diverse, but not really amazingly diverse. There’s no throat singers, yodelers, opera stars, R&B soulsters, metal screamers, country twangers, or rappers. While my tastes do venture into all those categories, except the yodeling and opera, these have become the singers that have stayed with me for years. They are the trusted ones that never let me down, and I return to them time and again because they’re all unique, recognizable, and ingrained into my opinions of what makes a good singer.

Bob Dylan

Most people hate his voice, but I’ve always been drawn to it. Bob Dylan embodies an anti-authoritarian yearning that is carried into his lyrics and music; a twangy whine that went against the grain of almost everyone when he started. Yet now, most contemporary singers born in the last 40 years are influenced by him whether they like it or not.

Steve Perry

Nicknamed “The Voice” in Journey’s heyday, loved by the fans, and hated by the critics. Steve Perry is the voice of AOR, and millions have tried and failed to come close to his tonality and skill. What puts him so far ahead is the fact that he was born to sing, combined with an innate sensibility to make it evocative. He communicates raw talent with a fluent technique.

Bjork

From whispers to roars, Bjork is a posterchild for originality. I’ve always thought that she might’ve grown up sheltered from the sounds of other singers, whereby organically developing her own unique vocals. Her voice is the canvas and brush in a sense, because it’s so multi-dimensional. Dabbling into folk, electronica, jazz, and pop, she has a voice that doesn’t fit well anywhere, yet is the only possible fit for her music.

Gregg Allman

His singing is effortless and pristine. I really believe that Gregg Allman has never had to practice or exercise his voice because it just is – in more words; he’s a natural. There’s no filters in it, the voice is pure, undiluted, and honest. He howls and gently speaks in tones that weave into the meaning of blues and country that is the Allman Brothers sound.

Thom Yorke

Radiohead’s frontman is blessed with a voice that simultaneously sooths and grinds on the ears of his listeners. A high tenor that frequently jumps into falsetto territory, his voice can exude weakness and subtlety like no other. The closest thing that I can compare it to is Miles Davis’ approach to trumpet playing. Thom Yorke embraces fragility with a control that pushes his music to new places.

Stevie Nicks

The oddball in Fleetwood Mac is Stevie Nicks. Out of the 3 vocalists in the band, only she is instantly recognizable. She provides the friction to the melodies making everything beautifully harsh, and in the process; interesting. The limited range and rasp work in her favor to make for a voice that’s truly genuine.

John Wetton

Mostly known as the vocalist and bassist for King Crimson in the 70’s and then Asia in the 80’s, John Wetton possesses a crystalline voice that never seems to lose its edge with time. His recent solo work and return to Asia last year are evidence that his clear tenor is strong and commanding, albeit in a gentle way. His voice is unusual in that it resonates simplicity over technique while being juxtaposed with his band’s prog/pop musical ventures.

Tom Waits

The 2 most similar vocal approaches on this list are, Bjork and Tom Waits. They both stretch their voices to the absolute maximum, but in the case of Waits, he stretches it to the point of seemingly physical pain. Each song has its own unique voice singing, and his vocals are able to connect his vision directly to the audience’s hearts and ears. From a drunken crooner to a carnival grunt to a lonely troubadour, he is in due service to his characters.

The Non-Fiction Bookshelf #2

2009-02-05T00:01:00.012-07:00

Another foray into my non-fiction favorites! If you missed the first installment, you can find it here along with any and all motivations that propel me to do such things...

Cosmos – Carl Sagan

In my view, this book and the accompanying PBS series combined into one entity is Carl Sagan’s masterpiece. He fuses astronomy, history, philosophy, religion, biography, speculation, and art into this project in such an unique and astonishing way that one can’t help but be completely enthralled with the information given. We start off as a passenger on a ‘spaceship of the imagination’ that takes us back and forth through time from the moment of the Big Bang to the end of the Earth – either by the Sun’s expansion into a red giant star about 6 billion years from now, or the end of humanity through self-destruction. In between and along the way we see the evolution of life with the progression of natural and artificial selection, to the rise and fall of the Ionians in Greece, we hear the questions posed about alien life and what it would mean to humanity, we find explorers of the future in their nuclear powered spaceships, and to the present where Sagan gives a moving plea in the final chapter, ‘Who Speaks for Earth?’ as he asks the people of the Earth to cooperate and help each other in ways that promote a global community that appreciates cultural diversity, as well as a common stewardship of the planet that we all share.
Being that this is one of the best selling science books of all time and the most watched PBS series ever; Sagan’s message of education and wonder made it out to a lot of people – including a 4 year-old and a 31 year-old version of me! As a professional astronomer and science populizer, he understood the importance of communicating to the public the contemporary discoveries of science and the lessons of history.

On exploration then and now:

These voyages of exploration and discovery are the latest in a long series that have characterized and distinguished human history. In the 15th and 16th centuries you could travel from Spain to the Azores in a few days, the same time it takes us now to cross the channel from Earth to the Moon. It took then a few months to traverse the Atlantic Ocean and reach what was called the New World, the Americas. Today it takes a few months to cross the ocean of the inner solar system and make planet-fall on Mars or Venus, which are truly and literally new worlds awaiting us. In the 17th and 18th centuries you could travel from Holland to China in a year or two, the time it has taken Voyager to travel from Earth to Jupiter.

On theology:

Every human culture rejoices in the fact that there are cycles in nature. But how, it was thought, could such cycles come about unless the gods willed them? And if there are cycles in the years of humans, might there not be cycles in the aeons of the gods?... It is said that men may not be the dreams of the gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.

On humanity and stewardship:

There are not yet any obvious signs of extraterrestrial intelligence and this makes us wonder whether civilizations like ours always rush implacably, headlong, toward self-destruction. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of stars… What account would we give of our stewardship of the planet Earth? We have heard the rationales offered by the nuclear superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?

On Bullshit – Harry G. Frankfurt

It’s a funny title and subject for sure, but this book is a serious philosophical inquiry into the nature of bullshit and its applications. I might also say that Frankfurt is a Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton – just to appease anyone that thinks this is all a bunch of bullshit.

Opening argument:

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit... In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, and what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis.

One of the main subjects of the book is the distinction between a liar and a bullshitter. Frankfurt contends that a liar is more vile than a mere bullshitter.

Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied by the truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth… In order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of truth. On the other hand, a person who undertakes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared, so far as required, to fake context as well. This freedom from the constraints to which the liar must submit does not necessarily mean, of course, that his task is easier than the task of the liar. But the mode of creativity upon which it relies is less analytical and less deliberative than that which is mobilized in lying. It is more expansive and independent, with more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color, and imaginative play. Hence the familiar notion of the “bullshit artist.”

Frankfurt’s descriptions of bullshit are so succinct and poignant, that I can’t elaborate or bullshit my way through any analysis of his theoretical study. The only thing I can add here, on a personal note, is that I get a giddy chuckle every time I read the word ‘bullshit’ and ‘bullshitter’ in this insightful book!

Geraldo Made Me Watch TV And Listen To Mercyful Fate: Part 2

2009-01-26T22:57:00.014-07:00

Part: II

Warning: This Might Sting a Little

But?

What!?

The content is the advertising. The fill is the car chase or the sex scene or something, that's supposed to keep you going between ads. If you look at a television program; the creativity and the imagination and the expenses and so on are for the ads; the car chase you can pull off the shelf. And in fact this has led to a serious deterioration of the political system… (and now a necessary digression-ed.) Take a look at the last campaign (presidential ’04). The campaigns are run by the same people who sell toothpaste, exactly the same PR agencies. And when they sell a candidate they do it the exact same way they sell a lifestyle drug. You don't put up information about the candidate, what you do is create delusional images that delude and deceive. The population knows it. A very small number of the population, about 10% of the voters, literally, knew the stands of the candidates on the issues. And it's not because they are stupid or uninterested. It's just like you don't know the characteristics of toothpaste.

Where’s The Funny Part?

And Then What?

to be continued...

Sources:
Chomsky, Noam. Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements Of Propaganda. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1991
Gitlin, Todd. Media Unlimited. New York: Henry Holt & Company LLC., 2002.
Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1977
McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium Is The Massage. New York: Random House, 1967
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves To Death. New York: Penguin Books, 1985
Schor, Juliet. Born To Buy. New York: Scribner, 2004
Wallace, David Foster. “E Unibus Pluram: Television And U.S. Fiction.” The Review of Contemporary Fiction. (1993)

NoOne’s Listening. 7 Dec. 2005 Chomsky.Info. http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20051207.htm
Americans Can’t Get Enough Of Their Screen Time. 21 Sep. 2006 Nielsen Media Research. http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.55dc65b4a7d5adff3f65936147a062a0/?vgnextoid=e6db9c9ba2ecd110VgnVCM100000ac0a260aRCRD

The Non-Fiction Bookshelf #1

2009-01-18T00:24:00.013-07:00

When I was 18 my reading life changed dramatically. Until then, I had been an occasional reader that occasionally found comfort in reading musical biographies, fiction that was assigned in school, and thumbing through astronomy books that I found on my dad’s bookshelf. Maybe it was the life changes that one experiences at that age that prompted me to read more – maybe. The truth being that I don’t really know why at a foundational level my habits changed, only that they did, and as a result I read fervently more. The first books to really grab me were all non-fiction and tended to be science related. Gradually literary fiction became a kind of secular religion (that will be a separate list in the future), while the non-fiction ventured into philosophy, social documentation, art and aesthetic critiques, essays, and humor.

So in an effort to take up blog space in computer commuter extra dimensional cyber land, I’ve compiled a list in no order of non-fiction books that’ve had an impact on me in some deeply bruised way. I should also say, that this will be an ongoing list with multiple posts – so please check back for the exciting continuations until you just can’t take it anymore, or I’ve come to the end, or you or I die of old age. For each book that makes my list, I’ll mix up and juxtapose a bunch of words and letters that’ll encompass in some form of formless arbitrary randomness, brief descriptions of the subject matter in question, a quote or two from the text, and of course my opinions on everything and way too much more…

Lonely Planets – David Grinspoon

I first encountered Dr. David Grinspoon when I was reading a biography on Carl Sagan. David is the son of Dr. Lester Grinspoon; a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School that has done original work in cannabis research and mental health, and was a close friend of Sagan. The next encounter I had with David was at a lecture he gave at DU for the Denver Astronomical Society to promote this book and his research. Observing his natural exuberance and love for these topics make him a highly likable character. Why, y’all ask? Because he’s not the stereotypical science lecturer that radiates boredom, dryness, uninteresting logic, and social skills that bottom out in the negative extremis; but rather, Dr. Grinspoon gives highly charged and invigorating descriptions of all things astronomical – plus the dichotomy of his possession of degrees in philosophy and planetary science with a doctorate in the latter, and his physical appearance of multiple earrings and a frizzy, thinning afro atop a tall body, make for an interesting lecturing experience. Also, I must mention that he’s a local that’s based in Boulder and a fellow musician, and that I’ve seen a few of his talks at this point. Yes, he’s quirky, funny, and damn smart; and he wrote this amazing book that masterfully paints his individuality and passion for science across its 428 pages.

Some samples:

On Earth being in the habitable zone:

The surface of a planet can be a good place for elements and simple molecules to get together, try new variations on their structural themes, and make ever more complex molecules. Especially if, as was this particular planet, the third stone from a third-generation star, it is blessed with a sprinkling of holy water rich in carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and phosphorus – the “biogenic elements.” It also helps if, when the music stops after the random accretionary dance, your planet winds up at a healthy distance from the irradiating glow of its newborn star.

On what “life” is:

Try this: Life is a self-perpetuating, self-contained chemical phenomenon that extracts or manufactures high-energy nutrients from its environment, excretes waste material of lower chemical energy, and surfs the energy difference between food and shit to go on living. Life is a breakfast cereal, a board game, a very long sentence, a bitch and then you die. I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret: We don’t really know what life is. We may as well try and catch the wind as pin life down with a tidy definition… Now that I’ve established that we don’t know what life is, I’ll continue to describe where we think it came from.

On attending a conference in his adopted home turf of Boulder, CO:

It was a classic Boulder crowd: well-heeled hippies with carefully matted dreadlocks falling over designer tie-dyes, bespectacled academics toting tattered notebooks, and smatterings of spandex, bike helmets, laptops, dogs, beards and peasant dresses (not necessarily on the same person but not necessarily not), the occasional whiff of patchouli oil or pot (but absolutely no tobacco smoking, under pain of death)… Boulder is a bubble town nestled against the mountains thirty miles northwest of Denver. It’s sort of like the city in Logan’s Run, a pleasant place, and anybody who is unhappy or unattractive or too old or unwealthy is recycled, and used to grow organic, free-range fruits and vegetables.

Ha! Learning has never been so fun as Lonely Planets! It’s a bullet-train ride through history, pseudoscience, real science, philosophy, astrobiology, and his specialty, planetary science. I must say that this is probably my favorite astronomy book, because I’ve plowed though it twice now and I’m sure I’ll do it a few more times as the years go on.

40 Ways To Look At Winston Churchill – Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin is a former lawyer that has been a clerk for Sandra Day O’Connor, provided legal counsel to an FCC chairman, and has been a professor at Yale Law School. In all her free time she wrote a book and started a family. Eventually she chucked the lawyer thing and decided to devote herself fulltime to writing, thus producing her second book; 40 Ways To Look At Winston Churchill.

This book is unique because it’s a short 300 page romp through an amazing life, where 40 questions are asked in the form of chapters about its namesake. Rubin knew she had to do something different in order to garner any kind of attention on one of the most recognizable figures in recent history. Among the piles of biographies on Churchill, this one stands out because it doesn’t tell the reader a linear set of facts that add up to a “business as usual” biography, but rather gives conflicting views of the man from diverse sources. It is up to the reader to decide, not the biographer, on the questions posed. The form of this book attracted me as much as the story of Churchill, because it represents in a non-fiction guise, what fiction authors have been arguing is the most unique quality to the art of fiction and reading; the reader is the co-author, the co-creator of the imaginative experience. Fiction authors will say that this is proof that reading is non-passive, but rather highly engaging for a reader that is experiencing story telling through their own mind’s eye, thus filtering the author’s story through their personal perspectives and interpretations to create a unique activity. By asking questions in the chapter headings, Rubin has given the reader a map to follow that points to the often conflicting notions of a character that resists definitive conclusions.

On the tactics of biographers:

Churchill biographers – like all biographers – decide their stories and include facts to support them. Someone portraying Churchill as the savior of his country chooses certain facts; someone debunking the Churchill myth chooses others. In deciding what facts to relate – where each detail must stand in for hundreds of omitted details – biographers act like novelists, using theme, irony, motif, metonymy, description, symbolism, morals, and the like to shape a particular image of their subject.

Winston Churchill’s own words:

“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

“Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right than responsible and wrong.”

“All newborn babies look like me.”

An American critic talking to Churchill about Mahatma Gandhi and the subject of Indian independence and Churchill’s reluctance to give up British India:

“Before we proceed any further, let us get one thing clear. Are we talking about the brown Indians in India, who have multiplied alarmingly well under benevolent British rule? Or are we speaking of the red Indians in America who, I understand, are almost extinct?”

On Churchill the renaissance man:

There is something melodramatic – legendary – fantastic about Churchill, a figure galloping out of the past. Even his name has Dickensian aptness: sacred and lofty, with decisive, alliterative elements. Can the facts be true? Could he really have been a man who was not only a prominent world statesman but also rode to hounds, fenced, flew airplanes, played polo, owned racehorses, painted, farmed, and collected tropical fish? Who without a university education was a celebrated war correspondent, novelist, historian, and biographer – whose books were not only best sellers but also won their author the Nobel Prize in literature, in the same year it might be added, he accepted the Order of Garter? He was the only person to serve in the War Cabinet in both WWI and WWII; he served in the Army, Navy, and Air Force. At age 70, in shooting contest with General Eisenhower and guard officers, Churchill hit 9 shots in the center of a bull’s-eye and 1 on the fringe.

Question and answer or not; you decide. That is the task of this book, because part of Churchill's mystique lies within our outlook. In this way, his likeness is seen through ourselves.

Music Archive 3: B-Side Material & EAL

2009-01-17T13:41:00.009-07:00

These clips are both from 2001. They were recorded at Masterworks with Shawn handling the drumming duties on Lonely and me doing everything else on both tunes. I’m a true believer in recycling to save the earth, and musical recycling to save frustration – forgoing the arduous process of having to think of new stuff. Extreme Artistic Lameness as it's called or just, EAL :)

Here I have Lonely "redux" from the original ’96 song – I thought it could be better in many ways so I decided to redo it in ’01 with a few changes. The sad part that concerns the EAL recycling thing, is that as a result of not having any new ideas right now, I’ve been working on new versions of both of these songs. Both will be blessed with a new set of lyrics and probably titles (most certainly ‘Lonely’ will get a new name in its third incarnation because I’ve always thought that name was kinda stupid and unoriginal. Don’t know why I called it that even at a distance of 13 years ago). So the new ‘Lonely’ is going to be just me and my parlor guitar and/or a nylon-strung classical guitar; while the new ‘Wave’ will likely resemble the original but have all kinds of cooler sounding synths and drum programming along with an acoustic piano and/or mandolin. Then again, I might get a fresh burst of new ideas and ditch these two relics, but until that point, I'll happily remain a mere shadow of my former self. HaHa!!

Wave - edit '01

Lonely - edit '01

Geraldo Made Me Watch TV And Listen To Mercyful Fate: Part I

2009-01-09T00:00:00.039-07:00

Part: I

Geraldo

Monkey see, monkey do.

~ American proverb

Geraldo crew taping a King Diamond concert

to be continued.....

The Spiritual Significance of Music

2009-01-01T09:26:00.038-07:00

My buddy in New Zealand, Justin St. Vincent has just compiled a book of artists, authors, and musicians called The Spiritual Significance of Music. It's a philosophical commentary on spirituality, art, and music in all of its forms from a diverse array of people. The book is being published today, the first day of the year. When he asked me to be a part of it a few months ago, I was flattered to say the least. For my thoughts to be alongside artists like; Devo, Ravi Shankar, Vangelis, Dave Douglas, and The KLF simply floored me! I'm glad to see Justin realizing his project. It's a great read and I hope everyone checks it out.

Music Archive 2: More Tunes From the Shoebox

2008-12-15T09:08:00.012-07:00

Here's some clips from songs that were recorded in different places and times. The first is called, Passages and it was done at Masterworks Studios sometime during '01. It was fun to do and remains a favorite older track of mine. The second is The Mandolin Song (didn't get too creative with that one) from the summer of '97 recorded at Kerr Macy Studios. The title says it all here; I had just gotten a mandolin and a cheap guitar in a trade for an older guitar and this is the result of me noodling around on this tinny instrument trying to learn how to play it.

Passages - edit '01

The Mandolin Song - edit '97

Racquetball Ninja

2008-12-04T15:57:00.012-07:00

Then I flew off the left wall, gingerly spun to the floor like a young ballerina trained in action movie special effects and managed to barely, albeit confidently, make a side ricochet shot to the left front corner. He returned it. Low and fast the ball traveled near bullet-train speeds straight to the back wall wherein I raced and then caught up with the blur of blue, nailed it back to the previous corner of choice and avoided an ugly meeting with the glass by doing a kind of swimmer’s flip turn pushing off the glass with my feet and landing with the agility of a ninja in an ‘80s movie. The faces of the crowd went from dropped jaws to the looks of mystical awakenings watching my performance and then my dad’s easy, far from flamboyant return hit and subsequent win in a match of racquetball.

The origins started around the time of those movies. I remember my friends and I wanting to be Ninjas when we grew up. Not cowboys or firemen, or portfolio managers or accounts receivable reps; but Ninjas cloaked in elegant cloth and weaponry silently stalking our prey in either good or bad guy modes of stealth. In the early ‘80s racquetball was ‘in’ as the preeminent sport of the yuppie crowd. I imagine guys coming from the office, stowing their leather briefcases in lockers, snapping on white headbands and getting a quick round in before going home to woo the ‘Misses’. I factually remember my dad taking me downtown to the DAC (Denver Athletic Club) on weekends to watch him play racquetball with his friends and then see people run in circles above a basketball court when I got bored. It was the time of Reaganomics and Soviets, Flashdance and Old Spice. 1983 was the year I finished kindergarten and started swimming competitively. It was also the year that my dad was the same age as I am now; 31.
In a kind of surface cultural way,’83 was probably the last year in which the ‘70s overlapped the new decade. Oil made a comeback, punk evolved into new-wave music and fashion trends, the détente of the ‘70s between the rival superpowers ended with a new arms race. Sounds kooky, but the DAC was to me a microcosm of the times. Bushy sideburns gave way to short spiky hair, dark wood paneling fell out in favor of wallpaper, racquets went from wood to graphite and fiberglass, carpet was shag and then berber. Likewise, my ambition to become a professional ninja metastasized during this age and I saw this weird, fun looking sport of beating the hell out of a blue rubber ball as the perfect introduction to ninjitsu. Only problem; I didn’t tell anyone.

Part of my personality involves not being vocal about things I want. So for example; I would expect my parents to know, and then politely ask me if I wanted to try racquetball or to just know that I wanted a dog really bad. Of course they didn’t being that my telepathy wasn’t as developed as it should have been back then, because part of the unspoken ninja code is secrecy; so I couldn’t just come out and say it because ninjas don’t speak too much and they probably don’t covet things like dogs and toys and stuff. A bit of a bind yes, but I saw it as my first real test of ninja-ness. Anyway, it didn’t work and I wound up doing swimming instead on the account of some of my neighborhood friends doing it and my parents either misreading the telepathy or thinking that it would be good for me as a communal sport to do with friends – silly I know. Whatever the reason, racquetball didn’t happen for me and it fell by the wayside as did other things like football and karate. And later on my telepathy failed me more, and more often when I had crushes on girls that didn’t seem to notice my telepathic longing for them, and as a result never introduced themselves to me, or they did but then expected me to make the next move when clearly the telepathy stated that they needed to make the leap or just out and out fawn over me. What can I say? Either the full messages weren’t received, even though I bombarded parties of interest with my telepathic mind powers, or I wasn’t cut out to be a true ninjitsu master; or the whole ninja thing was total bullshit.

For my serve, I threw him off by slicing the ball edge on so it approached him like a corkscrew – or a curveball on another planet with gravitational instabilities. The ball landed hitting the lacquered floor with such fierce english that it bounced back toward me up front, which I then dodged by jumping straight up and clinging to the ceiling awaiting his miss. But he didn’t miss. Diving for the ball, he hit it just hard enough to lob, barely making it to the wall of play. “Lucky!” So I then pushed off the ceiling and landed like a cat to return the play. And like a laser, I hit the ball hard – so hard in fact that its shape changed to resemble a pancake cutting through the air at supersonic speeds. Somehow he got to it, and to his credit; repelled my force by reflecting the laser pancake back at me. I merged with the floor to escape and his ball hit the ground costing him a win. My victory, on the account of his default. Mine.

So I swam for the next 8 years, until I was 14 and started high school. From day one I had my suspicions that this sport would not help with my training because I never saw or heard about ninjas swimming – but if I wanted to be a Navy SEAL or some kind of commando, it would then be valid. That was not the case; and in all honesty, I was a pretty average swimmer. The best I ever accomplished was taking 4th place in the state All-Star meet in the 100 meter backstroke, and that about killed me. I remember the disappointment of my family and coaches when as a high school freshman, I made the grave decision to stop swimming. At the time everyone except me was thinking scholarship, even though I had informed them via telepathy that there is no college of ninjitsu and that the ancient masters would balk if they knew that I had wasted my time on such a frivolous endeavor. So my answer to their downtrodden faces was that I had swallowed enough chlorine water to kill any kind of desire to continue.
After I broke free of the swimming debacle, I decided to fulfill my childhood desire and join the school’s football team. But after a full season of abuse and injuries, I realized that (1) football was not as fun as I thought and (2) getting hit in this sport is not like it looks on TV, but more akin to walking out into a busy intersection full of cars and elephants; and for the record, pads don’t help. To communicate this feeling even more, I would suggest running as fast as you can into any kind of solid wall. I sucked into extreme levels at football because at the first moment of impact in a game, I was transformed into a human piñata; my blood spilling onto the field, tainting what little confidence I had, and of course the sharks of the opposing team knew it and from then on they were chasing my fear. Should’ve known that this most inelegant sport of sports would not accelerate my aspirations any more than NASCAR would.
One sport I am pretty good at is skiing. Contrary to other misguided attempts, this sport is constructive to an apprentice ninja and it’s fun as hell – only now am I seeing the connection of “fun” to my calling (“Wow, having fun isn’t just a waste of time but really important to mental health!”). I know; you don’t have to say it, but it came to me almost as an epiphany all these years later – fun and play are vital to existence. Anyway, I started skiing around the same time as the swim team thing, but according to my adult brain, skiing didn’t take as much of a hold as swimming because of the vast differences in proximity to the neighborhood pool (.5 hours on foot) and mountain resorts (1.5 hours average drive time); and whereas the swim league was more or less free, the ski resorts seemed to have a monetary filtering process that cunningly eliminated people from middle to lower class backgrounds to enjoy the skiing experience – and this is 25 years ago, nowadays the rise in lift ticket prices, equipment, parking, gas, food, etc., could actually rival the inflation rate of war torn Germany after WWI. So my child brain was wondering, “why swim when skiing is funner?” Again, the telepathy just wasn’t there yet, but gradually around ’88 the messages started to come through because I found myself enrolled in a ski club that went skiing every weekend of the season. And this was a godsend because I got to ski with my friends every Saturday without parental supervision; or any other forms of supervision because I conveniently lied to my elders about taking lessons all day when in actuality, I was jumping off death defying cliffs, recklessly speeding down slopes, eating candy for lunch, skiing in closed and out of bounds areas, and cussing like Huck Finn. Yes, skiing was good to me and good for me as it taught me balance, speed, flight, dexterity, endurance. But at the risk of being too solipsistic, I did have my follies, including; 2 concussions, both thumbs jammed, a hyper extended and sprained knee, a black eye, a torn nail off of the right big toe, both wrists sprained, a case of whiplash, a 2nd degree sunburn, various cases of minor frostbite, cuts, scrapes, bruises, and most recently in ’07, a torn co-lateral ligament in my left hand that’s known on the mountain as, ‘Skier’s Thumb’, also the sprained knee and 1 of the concussions required me to be carried down the mountain in a ski patrol stretcher. I always told myself (sometimes delusionally) that every time I fell I was learning something new, “hmm, next time I won’t try doing a back flip off the chairlift.” Really, really hard knocks I guess.
Gradually the skiing tapered off due mainly to the aforementioned ticket prices and injuries, but I was also being pulled in other directions like working, and spending a large part of my then current life becoming a Heavy Metal Warrior. Sadly, the racquetball interest waned significantly during the adolescent years. That in between phase from kid to adult does weird things to one’s head; and it only becomes apparent a few eons later. And by this time I had all but put the sport and any lingering ninja desires to bed for a long sleep.

We went to slurp water from the drinking fountain before our next match. Silence; and then I say, “you played hard dad, I thought you had me.”
“Yeah.”
Then more slurping. At this point in a match there’s a razor thin line that must be waltzed upon when it comes to water. Too little is bad; too much is bad. And one thing I do have a talent for is proper water consumption. In a devious way, I made something up about the rec center mistakenly having the heat on in the racquetball courts and trailed it off with some unhumorus attempts at bitchy humor that he doesn’t really pay attention to but is polite and nodding anyway. And then I pause just long enough for him to notice that I’ve stopped talking and finish it off with, “seems like I need extra water to combat the sweat release.” And I then proceed to stick my face in the fountain with my lips closed not drinking for a good few seconds and then look out of the corner of my eye at him waiting, probably in deep concentration about his strategy in the next match or wondering what he’s gonna have for dinner that night. I move out of the way and he takes a nice long slurp.
Midway through the next match he grabs his side and I see him wince and cringe from the feeling of a belly full of water and I smile.

Fast Forward to 2002. Racquetball has been in permanent remission since the early ‘90s as it’s diminished popularity faded into the darkest corners of rec centers and clubs. Sometimes the courts have been bulldozed in remodeling projects to make room for more popular activities, or on some occasions, one battered court is left remaining as a transformed squash/pickle ball/badminton/racquetball court that allows for the most amount of people in as little space as possible that is both economical for rec centers and bad for scheduling. I once saw a place that used it’s sole racquetball court as storage space – oh the times have a changed.
’02 was coincidentally, the year my dad hit 50 and started playing racquetball again. After playing the sport into the ‘90s with fewer and fewer friends that knew of the game or how to play it; the spaces between games turned to years and he unknowingly let his racquet accumulate a hefty layer of dust. His reasons for getting back into the game were duplicitous in a parental and epicurean sense, as the idea was to spend time with my sister who was away at college – albeit in state – and, eat. They would meet once a week or so, play in the evening, and then embark on dining adventures in some of Denver and Boulder’s best and worst greasy spoons. For obvious gastrointestinal and sibling rivalry-like reasons, I became jealous as hell when I found out about their shenanigans. Could the ole kid sister be plotting behind my back to become a rival ninja? A combatant ninjette? Perhaps; but to this day, I do not know. So in retaliation and spite, I sent out a heated batch of telepathy and offset it with some ESP, telekinesis, or some kind of higher paranormal brainwave function that I had learned via a Time Life Books infomercial circa ‘89. It did the trick, because after months of pouting doldrums my dad asked me if I wanted to play sometime. A smile.
I was 25 that first time. And it kicked my ass so bad that I could hardly walk the next day. Seriously, I had trouble getting out of the truck for a few days; it was excruciatingly embarrassing. I’ve since learned that if one wants it to, racquetball will beat you up, push you to your physical limits, and generally manhandle your pride. And I say this because going into all the matches I play with my dad, I have the utmost confidence that I’ll succeed, and effortlessly win; but honestly that rarely happens, even in present times. At first, he played me left handed, which tipped things my way a little until he progressively got better and became ambidextrous. Keep in mind that this man was twice my age then. Nowadays he’s 56 and I feel like I’m in my physical prime, yet I’ve been getting killed on a weekly basis for the last 6 years! It’s almost not funny, but when I ponder it; I just feel and know that my dad is by far the better athlete. He simply deserves to win all the time. And it’s because he has an enormous will that’s absolutely unbreakable, plus an ability to focus and concentrate that is monkish in nature. Was he born with this innate talent, or did he learn it during his time in the Eagle Scouts or the Marine Corps? Maybe he developed it when he got bored during all those marathons, bike tours, and triathlons? I should ask him sometime.
So what can I do? He’s got the talent and discipline and I’ve got the creativity to think of alternatives to substitute for my lack of skill. Among the things that I’ve tried with varying degrees of success to help improve my game are:
• a new racquet
• nutritious diet
• a new guitar
• change of employment
• new shoes
• vacations
• eye protection
• different haircuts
• new balls
• different venues
• not getting wasted the night before
• vitamins
• designating some of my clothes as ‘lucky’
• restringing of racquets
• positive thinking
• getting wasted the night before
• vegetarianism
• reading up on the game
• caffeine
• tennis
• stretching
• racquet gloves.

None of ‘em helped to the extent that I needed. But in the spirit of not being a quitter, I’ve got a few things that I haven’t tried yet that might do me some good.
• lessons
• exercising
• self-help books
• hookers
• a headband
• meditation
• binge drinking
• several new eyepieces for my telescope
• cheating
• composing racquetball poetry
• practicing

As is shown, the balance is tipped almost significantly toward failure. ‘Almost’ because that brilliant star to steer by revealed its beautiful head once again. Not an astronaut or famous singer, or a plumber or office manager; but a ninja cloaked in worn out clothes and a neat racquet, clumsily running and jumping all over the court. I hear him instructing, guiding me through play, smiling, having fun. Investing axioms of wisdom in my head that come with age and vantage points. Keeping spirits up as I get pummeled on game day. Making the whole adventure authentic as an experience and not an outcome – the experienced road is long but not endless and there’s much enjoyment to be had along the way. A whisper in my ear; “shut the fuck up, quit your bitching, and start having some fun!”

“Okay” I tell myself as I plan my comeback from an 11 point deficit. And… BAM! My serve nearly cracks the concrete wall of play, shattering the ball in the effect. It rains down singed blue rubber that stinks real bad. Redo. I lob it to the right corner and he struggles as he’s not quite sure how to return it. But he does. Barely. I transform into a human Chinese Star by doing continuous front flips up to the front of the court. Smack the ball, anticipate his demise, but no. Again, he gets to it somehow – I don’t know. I see the ball going to the other side of the court and meditate for roughly 7 nanoseconds. A dive, then a crash; blood everywhere. But I am not stopped because I returned it somehow. Barely. At this point I feel and look like Rocky when he called out, “Yo Adrian! We did it!” But it wasn’t over. His return hit came right at me like I was a bullseye. I deflected it like a warrior with my racquet as a shield, and it flew high, just scraping the wall. He hit back, lobbing the ball – almost floating in the air. Everything went into slo-mo. In awe, we both watched the ball ascend and then descend. He was ready for whatever I might do; ninja or not. I gripped my racquet with both hands in samurai fashion, cocked my arms behind my head and flung it as an Excalibur to meet its match in the air.

Planetary Conjunction 12/1/08 with the Moon & clouds

2008-12-01T18:55:00.009-07:00

For this most recent planetary conjunction I took my camera out to the ole backyard to photograph this upside down sourpuss face. I inverted the images so it looks like a lopsided frown. On both pictures, Venus is the brighter top most 'eye' while Jupiter is the dimmer planet, and the crescent Moon is sporting some nice earthshine. The first pic is kinda grainy because I used a really high ISO (1600) to offset the long shutter time that is clearly visible in the second pic, which is blurry due to the frosty wind and the subtle rotation of the earth - makes it look like a long sourpuss face. Even though I was standing in snow and dogshit, I had a broad smile as I watched the second (Moon), third (Venus), and forth (Jupiter) brightest objects in the sky get together.

Music Archive 1: Some Dusty Songs From the Music Vault

2008-11-17T20:51:00.005-07:00

I've been making music for a long time now and last year I released my first 'real' CD under the name, I/O\I. Outside of that, I literally have hours and boxes full of other music that I've recorded either by myself or with bands over the years that've never been released in any fashion. So I went digging and found some stuff that I can post on this ever growing media dump that is called my blog. Keep in mind that this stuff is rough and was never finished properly, and as a result will always just be 'demo' or 'B' quality recordings that will only ever be good enough to be posted in very edited snippets on this here site of mine.

All of these short samples were recorded in the spring of '96 at FTM Studios in Denver with my buddies; Shawn on drums and Gabe on bass, with me doing everything else. The whole thing was hastily put together because another friend, Scott, was doing an internship at FTM, and he needed a band to record as a practice project, so he called us and we said, "uh, Hell Yes!" And I say 'hastily' because we didn't have a singer and no one knew one, so the shy guitar player (me) got pushed into doing it. Trust me, it's for your benefit that I edited most of my singing out because your screen might break.

Fall River Road-edit '96

Lonely-edit '96

Nightmare of the Burritos-edit '96

The Skynard Song-edit '96

Shaping Point - A Short Story

2008-11-16T22:47:00.007-07:00

Singing solitary
Nowhere
As another

Moving through twilight, the guiding conduits of freeway bulge with resistance. Presence. And the late summer sky, big and open, he breathed it with a naivety that evoked primal impressions of conflict in the detached self. In skies vast but immediate, in roads ahead strewn about into miles of asphalt that penetrate tender lands running into the coming dark; that move and sway like the ancient winds in far away grassy hills and plains. Every man and machine moving in circles and cadence to this night of day. The tired journey around. Seen everywhere and all over the faces in side mirrors. Singing invisible songs, talking to phones, looking at him. Driving home on this Friday evening. Withdrawal. Feeling that the day and week are done, they had navigated another monotonous trial of will. Of false pride, strife, value. Keen and distant, and the clash of senses, thoughts scattered, bodies beaten. Together in One.
His shape was rough and torn, hands cracked, muscles constricted, the proof under fingernails. It had been a hard day and he was looking forward to being fucked up. Losing himself in drink just as work had lost him in the day. Further, into. Thoughts rambling in echoes of happenstance that blur his mind’s eye to traces and crumbs of experience. Music, cigarettes, bumper stickers, women through tinted windows. Encroaching light poles and the impending darkness turning on, and on.

Held in the middle
A protection like warm skin

He woke and saw the spider. Still and absolute. In the faint red glow of the alarm clock display, 3:42 AM. Only his eyes moved. He wanted to get up. To get up and crush it in his hand. He wanted to feel the body popping in a tissue, smashing its insides and smearing the rest on the blank wall by his bed. He was afraid and unmoving. Wondering where the spider had been. In the bed? On his bare skin, intruding on peace as a ripple in water? The moment of fear was paralyzing, exhilarating. This intuition spoke in stiff jabs that left breathless difference.

Rhythms maintaining order
Awake in dreams
Everywhere and within

Sweeping. Nails, bits of wire, cardboard, plastic wrappers from half devoured vending machine items, dirt, pieces of wood, tobacco spit, metal shavings, mostly it was drywall plaster - the white mud that gets everywhere in the last stages of construction. Intoxicating; the little cloud of dust and dirt that consumed him while he swept. The smells of everything kicked up in the air, breathing their way into him. He felt overtaken by it all. The dirty air, the garbage, penetrating him and his dust mask, his clothes and skin. It was in him and he’d cough it up later that night, he’d see it in mucus on tissues.
It was the labor of the individual. The young man. Falling into place from high nowhere, from ambition and meaning, to sweeping and wanting to go home. So pure and undiluted the feeling. To be away. To hate this place. Belonging to someone else, it was part of their institution and he knew he was a part of it. The integration. But, he was apart from it as well, everything he thought and said seemed to go against his being in places like this. The counterproductive friction that he produced for himself and others, like an unruly squall in the open ocean, disruptive but expected of the expanse. Yet a bludgeon hung over him that kept him in check. It was the money, like a whore, that controlled him and every decision he made. It was him and all of these guys that moved and swayed through work and weekend. Ennui in gentle waters. The balancing act of the American dream. This bludgeon; a reflection of all the weekends and needs standing on shoulders over his head, arms cocked and ready to swing. Pressure. Swollen and infected, his spirit was being laughed at. By someone, sometimes him, but definitely by those that he felt were above him in so many ways. The overachievers, prodigies, young artists, the talented. He would languish in the cool dim of so many others throughout his day. From bitter ambivalence that pecked and tugged, to violent anger that stormed through, destroying things and feelings. Mostly it was the Sadness; the ever present numb that filtered all experience, that blockaded his sensory vision like a dark blind spot to the extent that only the outer edges of the periphery were visible. Exhausted, weary, like walking in clothes soaked in heavy oil, it was the weight of tiredness that held down every motivation, dulling his fight. He sought sleep all the time. The comfort of unconsciousness.

After light and the room that holds

The spider was gone. 4:57 AM. He reached over the alarm clock, pulled it away from the wall, the lamp, the same, nothing. He stood up in the dark, in his small square room and waited for the vertigo to wear away. Standing, looking around, dizzy with sleep, his vision was hazed in gray static. Like the momentary after burn of a television that’s just been turned off, it was a demarcation point with end and beginning on either side. He starred into the dark of the room not looking at anything, but making out the emptiness of shapes, things around him, with him. In this half-wake delirium he was so happy, so at ease knowing that it would be over any second. He knew about life. He knew it was the spaces like this, where nothing is anything and nowhere is here. These miniscule chokes in existence that blurred all the other. His ears rang and his eyes blinked, he outstretched his arms to feel in the dark, to think of a first step, to think of the light.
And the end.
It was over because he realized it was over. The 3 steps to the light switch. The carpet and stuffy bedroom air. He felt the wall, his hands moved up and down, in circles, he looked into the blindness feeling for the switch. Finding it, he paused and saw a fresh snow covered prairie on a cloudless day, he squinted at oncoming traffic. The light was on. Everything harsh and whitewashed. Blinking, looking around the quiet, he found an empty room that he already knew. On the window pane, his partial reflection looking back against the bare wall and opaque night.
He looked under the sheets. Thinking about the bite, if it was venomous. He looked on the floor amiss the array of books, soiled laundry, work boots. The window sill, the drapes. Nothing. He thought of the poison and its effects, he thought of pain. The closet; could the spider be in his clothes? Under the bed? He crawled around the room relentlessly searching for any sign. A web, dead flies. Nothing. Scared and anxious, the reflection fading with the coming morning. He wondered if the spider could be far from home, the nocturnal searching of prey could have drawn it far from its web. The fear spread to purpose, to the pursuit of an end point. Through the window the eastern horizon started to glow.

Something in a distance
Suspended in duality
A different kind of beauty

Orange, pink, blue. The deep light and long shadows. A portrait that hangs behind buildings, mountains; juxtaposed against. It is. Dynamic and teeming with allure, the sky as the mind of an artist or a child that forms the ever-present background of everyone. And him in his car. In the solitude of a small space. Isolation in the evening traffic with everyone but without anyone. He felt better now, alone in the river of cars swimming against the current, it was laughable. A buoyancy. Looking in the rearview, the slow moving light behind the mountains to the west brought him a solace that was normally faint to his eyes. Today was different. Today was distraction. Today was different.
To be away. He thought. In the traffic, in his dazed state of automatic functions, he thought of being away, of being fucked up, of sleeping in daylight hours, he thought of the difference. Saturday and what it held. The smell of people. Barbeques, children, barking dogs, booming cars. The flatlands of his neighborhood. The browned greenery that is either dead or dusted with dirt, dilapidated houses that used to be, the trash and dirt blowing in wind, scavenging rodents and birds, the tribal-like graffiti on fences and concrete, flowers of all color in plastic pots, American flags, little satellite dishes facing east. He rolled his window down and felt the summer. The cooled evening of the freeway. It was the exhaust and breeze that appealed to this romantic self. This is the way of stories with no endings that perpetuate for generations. This is the music of culture, of entertainment and pleasure. It seeks the weekend through routine discipline, starry nights and worn out steel-toed boots. It’s what is. With heaven smiling down. Everything is so easy and beautiful.

Like waking
Something different from the view inside

In the large open of the future building, other workers would walk by and say things that he couldn’t understand. If he happened to make eye contact with one, he would nod or say, “yeah” or “uh-huh,” not caring about the returned looks of puzzlement. Through the contractor provided earplugs, human speech was made into grunts and mutterings. And he liked this. With earplugs, he heard his every breath, swallow, cough with utter clarity while the rest of his surroundings became a solid humming drone. It was as if he was inside himself, in his own body, like a solitary piloted vessel in vast or confined territory. The simple foam filters gave him his own room in which to exist, to think of the future and what it held for him. His dreams and ambitions, so close to his real place and purpose. He thought of his glories, the triumph over his surroundings, he thought of the recognition. The relentless hard work. A long life of success with admirers giving their praise to his achievements. He would command respect in all of his endeavors, he would give to charities, crowds would follow, he would be acclaimed with awards and honors. And the end, like deafness, like solitude, westerly in slow dissension. He would laugh and enjoy life, enthusiasm would flow with unwavering vigor, he would produce radical change, his vision would be talked about as, “laser-like precision.” And all the time he would cry like a king. Alone in this room, he would be far away from this and now. Earplugs wouldn’t be needed, the future would be different, the reciprocal of now. And death suddenly. At the top. A beating, an assassination, a violent murder. He imagined his blood in the media, all over the web, the front pages, TV. His transcendence. The story exported to the world, to history, a legacy. The innocence of his torn body. The looks of bad smells and shock. Sacrificial. The rhythms of rain showers and slow motion. The sorrow, the remembrance. Glacial anger channeled into movies, books, tribute events. Hearing the eulogy at the funeral praising him with goodness and reverence that induced mass mourning and sadness at the event of his passing. There would be suicides and copycat murders. Posthumous offerings. Pageantry. He would become eternal. Hero, artist, champion. Things. “Uh-huh.” So far away. Far away from here and anywhere he’s ever been. Delusional and so close to him that it is him. The illusion so actual and true that it exceeded the prophetical and arrived at the real. The faith he had in himself was so pure that not even reality could find its way back into his sentience. He was of difference. This man standing in here, this large open room, this man sweeping. This man smiling on images, this immense place in front of everyone’s thoughts, this man of adoration. This product of power, seeking out the more and the against, in the hard landscapes of diversion inside everyone. An undercurrent. Like a wind that blows over the prairie, constant and broad in tidal motions that will become formal, relaxed to sensation. That dryness whistling though, carrying echoes of sound. Reverberations of the original everywhere reaching places known, ordinary, accepted. So commonplace that the sounds carried are distant and altered, bearing a likeness to themselves, but not of birth, not of origination. Nor of himself. He is the image that blows in the dry winds of his own dull places. He moves to his self of prestige and eidolon-like status, experiencing all through the dream and enduring all through nocturnal dreams of what is normally called, the real.

End and beginning on either side

He watched the play of colors on the window. For a good few minutes he saw purples and pinks turn to oranges and yellows. Birds and quiet. The spider was nowhere, he wanted sleep. It was the day, and other than this beginning, he had no interest in it. Realizing the cold on his skin, he walked over to the curtains, pulled them shut and climbed into the bed. He thought of the dark and how he wanted to be free of fear and anxiety, he wanted to be the room that held him, and wanted to be nothing. Inanimate shapes around him, light after burnings imprinted into the eyes when he closed them shut, still glowing long after in luminescent trails that burned hotter and more poignant than the initial carefree glance. He loved these vivid reproductions of light, they were real, as real as the objects they personified, only enhanced. This is what he wanted. This, and then sleep unnoticeably creeping, taking him over. No dreaming, only a calm sleep. Over and over.

Today was distraction
Everything so easy and beautiful

Closer to home and the coming night, the first stars were appearing near the zenith. Stark, portentous, the bellies of clouds reflecting the glow of city in pink, hazed fortunes, toil and pace. A different kind of beauty. But he knew all this. In his elevated mood he hadn’t noticed it was taking longer than usual to get home until he saw, in the oncoming lanes, that there was an accident ahead. The characteristic twinkling blue and red light and diverted, distracted traffic. Coming upon the scene, he saw a car completely smashed in on the driver’s side. From what he could tell there seemed to be no other vehicles involved, hence the question as to how this happened, he saw no answer. He looked away giving his attention back to the road, but the flow of cars was at a near stand-still while police converged four lanes into two, and drivers captivated, turning heads, rotating gazes between disturbance and road. Just as the rest do, he watched in alternating single second frames of information and curiosity. Moving up closer he watched a boy cry into the shirt of a man that looked to be his father. Resemblance was obvious. Solid and stoic, the man was looking at nothing; a tight grip, a stare that had no focal point, as if the moment was attacking all senses, diffusing emotion into detachment. A television news crew was hurriedly setting their equipment up as a paramedic crew tended to a body inside an ambulance that was about to speed away. Thinking this body was a brother and a son, he looked again at the man and boy sitting on the concrete barrier that divided the east and westerly lanes of highway. He felt a fleeting sympathy for them, in the center of a spectacle of light and onlookers. It was an episode that had already happened. Witnessed everyday in front of billions of eyes, and tiredly played out without limit. The shock, only to those involved. For most of the onlookers the scene would be replaced or forgotten in a few days. He drove on.
Gaining speed, he fell into a kind of solemn cool. Staring through the windshield, a dream of light washed into streams of frozen motion. Oncoming headlights and the street light above as blurred into solitary streaks against the late evening commotion. Bemused symmetry. The confluence dissolving into a calm center. Moving in the direction of a place. Past the disturbance he continued eastward into skies and territory darker in scope and view. The night black, the landscape fading of iridescence into scant points of light. His exit in the seeable distance ahead, he thought of the body. The mangled car that once carried him, the paramedics closing the doors of the ambulance as others watched in finality. Who was this man and where had he been going? Dead and finished, to everyone that knew of him. To his father and brother, even to the one who barely understood.
Mind drifted into vignettes of the past, of childhood and place. He saw himself as a boy, not far from this site, in blown winter snow, wandering hills and fields. Running, playing, enduring cold and mind. He was away from the house and the endless patterns of boredom. Straying in arbitrary directions for hours, an obscure purpose, an absence. Solitary. Nature and an imagination giving him companionship in compromising ways that people can do. The personalities of compassion, elusiveness, a purpose of something other decentralized. Asleep in his thoughts, sown in dramatic plays of coherence. Of something in a distance, moving, fighting. In blasts of wind and snow, the view of white in all directions penetrating everything absolutely. It was alive and suspended in the monotone of the storm, floating in centers of sound and scene. Struggling against the blizzard, collapsing and rising with gusts. Like a star flickering in tides of atmosphere, irregular in site, it fought with and against. Hard to breathe. He thought it was going to die out here. It moved farther from him and he thought to run after, but he couldn’t. His struggle was exactly the same, he was enduring everything that this figure ahead in his direct view was going through. His fear was the storm around him, it was in him fighting. Remembering the cold shivering, sweating, he looked back to see his footprints, but there was no trace. He saw no trees, hills or sky. The whiteout wrapped him up as if under murky water. The landscape was turning to gray as it got darker out. It was gone, in the distance. At a loss, he failed to not wonder about it, then and now.
And then the spring and summer too. The same steps but in wind streaked meadows and sunshine that would burn his skin red. He remembered packing food and water, and then supplies like a blanket, flashlight, extra socks. Each journey gaining knowledge for the next. Farther ahead, always pushing. He would sleep with the chill of the late summer night under an old bridge, braving the poisonous things he knew were there but couldn’t see, the fear and his wild thoughts compounding everything. Preparing himself, he thought, for adulthood and independence, for the unmapped terrain of future experience. The freedom of being alone. And later from his distance, the city would turn on at the close of days. He remembered the night sky looking otherworldly in its variance from where he was. Continuous wandering for long stretches of time and place out of an innate desire that constantly propelled him through childhood and adolescence. The sinuous maps of thought, the forced endurance, winning an awareness of means and reason for being where he was for the small cost of physical exhaustion and alienation. And now through the telescopic vantage point of age, the wanderings defined himself early as different in the capacity to accept his immediate reality as it was, opposed to how everything should be. Despite awareness, that dusty memories crack and break down over time becoming dreams, fiction, endlessly recycled back into questions of trust. The wistful reminiscence, the authentic. The dualities in everything.

Refracting that wasn’t there

He sat by himself on an empty five-gallon bucket next to a future bay door. Friday’s lunch time and he had nothing to eat. It was more of a reprieve from the monotony of sweeping and hauling trash to the dumpster all morning, but not from the place or people within it. He smiled to himself as he watched a group of guys across the way sitting on their buckets, talking their slang, eating, and making gestures. The not-so-mysterious dialog of modern social grooming. He wondered of these traditions, of the culture that made these men. The forces that sculpt the ethos in groups of people. Outside the day was already hot. He saw the city through a heat mirage refracting and blurring the skyline into water that wasn’t there. It was sensational. The view of these modern castles built by the men in his company and him. Monuments to power, and the systems that mobilize massive teamwork, cooperation of all, the coercion and pride that is equal in magnificence. He was thinking of the significance when he sneezed into the lap of where lunch would normally be. He spat a few times on the concrete and smeared it with the bottom of his boot. A mix of recycled dirt and slime on a darkened floor, it was ugly to him.

Still and absolute
Only eyes moved

Walking into the building, he passed through the revolving doors, through the lobby and up to the entrance of the restaurant. Red velvet and brown satin interweaved into braids forming a tunneling archway that he thought was laughable in its pretentious kitsch. He smiled at the hostess and she did not look or greet him as he walked past. The braids turned looser to woven sheets and the tunnel grew dim and small as he walked its length. Claustrophobic and almost colorless now, he walked forward hunching over, feeling the fleshy fabric touch him like a breeze, like warm skin. Spreading through the off-centered curtains, he thought that he must’ve walked through 50 or so, until he unknowingly came to the last one, hurriedly peeling them back. Then, standing in an immense expanse of open space, he should’ve been out of breath, but he was calm. He stood, awed by the vast area that was this single room. Across from him, about 100 yards, a circular bar with numerous patrons and bartenders. The light was dim, yet hard. It was a room of distinct shadows cutting through the air with no gray. Looking up, his eyes followed the blank, windowless walls of this hollowed out high-rise to a brilliant point of light, akin to looking at the sun trapped in a box with all 4 corners disappearing into its light. This powerful energy source shining down hundreds of feet onto him and the floor. Remembering his hunger and why he came here, he moved toward a booth that had a tall cylindrical wall enclosing it and a single opening barely enough for a grown man to get through. Tables like individual pods randomly dispersed on the pale restaurant floor. The place was full of all kinds. A dull, blending chatter pervaded and echoed throughout, reminding him of an orchestra tuning before a concert. Dissonance. He slid his body into an empty booth and waited for service.
Thirst and hunger were consuming him. The empty feeling in his stomach held his body suspended just as the clean, acidic smell of ammonia clung to the air of the room. Frustrated, he stood up, scanned the room and waved at the closest waiter. Nothing. He stepped out and walked to the bar. When asking for help, people looked at him, but did nothing as if they heard him but had no reaction. Blank stares in the hollow building, he resolved to leave. Looking for a fire exit but, not surprisingly found nothing. He looked back and saw his father. A flash of confusion, relief, excitement, recognition. Alone at the bar watching television, he called out, “dad!” Pushing through the sudden mass of people, “dad!” Louder, smaller, crowded. Everywhere people talked, smiled, laughed. Shouting into ears, wry expressions hanging on words. “Dad!” Faces and noise. Skin and scent rubbed through, all over, plowing deeper into the chaos. Nowhere. His father couldn’t hear him and he stared further into. And he stopped. An aged statue, or a lost child in the hapless currents of this expanse. He saw nothing. Waited. Nothing saw him. The walls, the blinding light above, the decision. Turning, he ran toward the entrance, the curtains of sheets and braids, boring through people like they were nothing. Angry, and no one noticed.
Violently he pulled back and apart. The sheets had become sticky, weightless, and he tore through easily. Closer into, a growing apprehensiveness came. Like swimming underwater, he couldn’t see or feel, save for waves of anxiety rippling through nerves as he ran slower. He was tired and wary, feeling the stringed tension pulling, holding him in an almost polite way. Vibrating with the dissonance, the complete disharmony of everything now. In the undercurrent of helplessness, he stepped back but pulled everything in the dark place with. The sheets of strings were all over him, invisible now and a seemingly greater hold, pulling him back, moving him forward, exaggerating his movements but not letting him go. A hostage in an invisible place. He released his grip.
Closing his eyes, he desperately wanted to see those after burns of light from a few hours ago. A protection. Like the art that compelled him, these impressions were a manifestation of substance outside itself that functioned as time stamps, moments frozen in existence like architecture in light. The evocative excitement and comfort, yet the dark of the room existed in him. With his eyes shut he saw nothing of any thing or object, and now he was genuinely frightened. Now he felt a crippling fear that would not let go. He thought that he could die in this place, never seeing outside this again. And then he realized his being, his substance of thought, his tormentor. This empty room that held him in the middle of dreams.
And he saw the white of daytime underneath his eyelids and knew it was over. An intense headache and a warmth on his skin from the sun, he opened his eyes and knew that he was late for work. Flung the sheets and jumped out of bed, ran to the bathroom and stuck his head in the shower. The cold water shocking him in a kind of self inflicted punishment for oversleeping. He was fatigued and hungry, and there wasn’t enough time to pack his lunch. “Just have to suffer through it today.” The worst kind of work on the site would go to him in exchange for being late and he knew this. Concrete pour, trash detail. In the car racing down the freeway, loud echoes of the dream and more than the recommended dose of painkillers. “At least it’s Friday.”

A solitary piloted vessel
Far away from here and anywhere

“Looks like we got a company man here,” some asshole said as he tapped his wrist and kept walking. No one around. It was just past the end of the overtime shift. Like waking, he took out the earplugs, slid his dust mask off and threw them in the trash heap he’d been building all day. Leaned the broom on the wall and headed for the time clock.
He found the door of the contractor’s trailer locked. Inside was the time clock he needed to punch out with. He looked around for anyone that might have a key but found the site barren, as would be expected on a Friday evening. Walking toward his car, the intensity of the sun, the heat. He took the hardhat off and ran his fingers through sweaty hair, glanced back at the site a last time and saw the skeleton of the building he had spent his day in. It was starting to look like something. Something very different than what he had thought, distinctly different from the view inside. The same inside that had no record of him being there. Since he couldn’t punch out, it was as if he was still in there, or punched in and left, never coming back. Totally ridiculous and it would be hard to explain. Remembering the morning stupor, he almost wondered if he was in the wrong place. “The days are getting longer.” A sigh and a grin. Walking to the car, going home.

Presence
Everywhere and all over
Together in one

He pulled off the freeway at a rural county road exit. Day dreams consumed him to the point of hallucination delivering him miles past his exit, to be here in a mirage of naivety and repose, night and the shapes of emptiness. He drove farther into the country, parking at a dirt intersection with no reasons. Out of place. He waited for the dust to settle, then stepped away from the confines of the car and felt the same unsteadiness as he had in the bedroom during the day’s dark morning hours. Looking skyward, stretching from the cramped quarters, he felt something more than lightheadedness, an instinct intuitively broadcasting, pushing. An impression that he had been orbiting about himself. Locked in a revolving continuum all this time, many times over, to arrive at this place. He breathed hard, shallow, and reached for the vehicle, for anything to hold. Shoes slipping in the dirt, he gripped the open side door swinging with it, his equilibrium giving away, gravity pulling down. Wondering then knowing what had happened. The undertow of reminiscence, of fantasy, washing clean the present until a self imitation left him abandoned here. Beyond forgotten territory with no direction to the natural, the original. Here as another. One that did not inhabit the dreams of his future, that did not inhabit anything he saw.
He already knew this. Without any struggle, sitting in the dirt, leaning against the car as someone else. In sight, in body. Everywhere in an enormous purgatory of years encircling him, waiting for everything to begin. Priming and adapting all along without the acceptance of suffering; the endless pursuit that had made him tragic. In the shell of comfort around, he saw earnestness fail to infiltrate existence, leaving him unscathed in fictions that had become a projection of an unknowable place. He knew all of this. Yet he still watched from behind a periphery of mirrors that judged every action and inaction, every choice he made. And it had become exhausting, to the extent that this brief impacting knowledge would erode like an ancient crater weathered over in stasis. The fainting of a stranger into unconsciousness.
And there he sat. Weary, tired. He coughed and then spat onto the dirt next to his boot, seeing the dust of the day in spit, lit by the interior door light. Smothered it out of habit, embarrassment. He pulled himself up, took the key from the ignition and closed the door. Feeling the barren effects of his spell, he started down the road. If for nothing else, it was nice to hear the dirt underneath his boots, walking in the absolute dark of the late summer night. A rural sky immense in grandeur, an infinite view from his eyes. Constant yet dynamic. His head arched back to see as he walked down the unknown road. Outside of things.
Ahead a grouping of trees on each side of the road, probably surrounding a small creek and culvert. Completely still, no wind. No time. The extreme silence disturbed him, frightened his view. He stopped, looked up at the stars again, like home. And then something in the trees. No breath. Like crying. A young person. He couldn’t tell what side of the road the sound was coming from, just that it was in the trees. Emanating, suspended in nowhere. He was petrified but willed himself over to one side. Listening. And then it stopped like quiet and nothing. He looked back toward the car, for comfort, confirming it was there in the distance. He waited, completely still, calm. It slowly faded back, crying and moaning, but farther away, softer. He felt his skin radiate. The sound was moving within the trees, circular, slow, with no other noise to offset, like leaves under shoes, like flying. Weeping. He had to help, needed to see. Stepping toward and walking into the brush, the trees were tall and thick with dark against sky. He reached out to feel for branches, to see with his hands. Tripping over and into exposed roots, moist sand, probing farther, his heart knocking hard inside. It was still faint, well into and under the canopy of woods. The wail, pursuing him to the dried creek bed as he chased it. He stopped and stood looking around. In the quick of the moment, he thought someone might be playing, tormenting him. Laughing somewhere, watching and waiting for his next act. “I’m not falling for this shit!” Trying to believe that he wasn’t afraid. The imaginary audience made him to be a clown and he had to retaliate. “Why don’t you come out and show your chicken-shit, redneck faces?” Panicked yelling in full armor. “C’mon!” Nothing. Words in the air. “C’mon!” He waited, hardly moving, breathing. “Go back to the barn and fuck yourself some more.” And mumbled, “I’m leaving.” His display just disappeared into the night. The sound hadn’t stopped and he imagined a few sons of farmers laughing next to a kind of portable audio device. He found a baseball sized rock and threw it. And another. None of anything made sense to him. The crying was still moving in circles and waves. Whirling around him, ephemeral. Another rock and his frustrated growl turned to a loud yell. There was no one here but him and he knew this now. And the fading lone weeping. He knew a fool by himself, his breathing shallow and defeated, seeing through broken sense. He sat in the soft sand and cupped his face with dry, cracked hands then moving them up, pushing back hair, seeing arms scratched and bloodied from thicket. The trees around him rustled with a fresh breeze, the sounds of ocean tides in the leaves. Cool, moist air entered him, touching the inside of a home in disrepair. The visiting end fragmented, singing solitary, from nowhere to here. He was crying.
There was something. Behind the mass of trees, a light, gentle but austere. Immediately he stood up, wiped his face and squinted to see through the opaque flutter of leaves. It shone elongated like the space underneath a closed door. Something hidden, vague. He was curious but not afraid of this presence sharing a place with him, and he marveled at this. Like the light in the room of his dream, echoing back, it was an instantaneous empathy with something, anything, that he had not met in years. It was a visceral feeling that he felt but could not understand. It was the threat of fostering a relationship, a beginning at the expense of failure looming in the dark. And so a new calm permeated everything and the light grew with all of this. Soft winds moving through wood and brush, through his damp clothes, smelling of night and sweat. He began making his way out of the wooded area, pushing past limbs and branches, hearing twigs and dried leaves break underneath his weight.
From the lower grade, he pushed himself up to the plateau of the dirt road. Brushed himself off and looked back at the moon rising in the east. It was almost full, and beautifully darkened by dense layers of atmosphere near the horizon. He turned and walked toward the car. The dirt and gravel road, pale like the desert world behind him. Reflecting, diffusing the light he had known before.

In gentle waters
A dark blind spot

His car was the only one in the parking lot. The day was still hot and the sun had started to touch the mountains, changing everything in colors. He poked a key into the lock, opened the door and eased himself down. Simultaneously savoring the feeling of the seat and being annoyed by the heat of the car. He started it and felt the blast of air vents and loud music, taking him back to the morning rush to work. Switching off the radio and rolling the windows down, he put it in gear and pushed the accelerator out of the building site and onto the road.
Driving the roads of city, the systems of rhythm maintaining a pulse and order. Alive in everyone. Symmetrical circuits through bodies of community that stretch and overlap one another, blending divergent currents into a contentious confluence. And he, everywhere and within. The aloof witness, the busy talker, the absorbed listener. Going home under the wake of a setting sun. In patterns beginning and ending. In simple progressions of time. Awake in dreams, existing all around and inside their sights. Reflecting back, reciprocating experience as memory, as real. Worn out and disconnected, he slowly drove with the line of cars that were entering the freeway. Moving slow like colors bleeding together in the sky, his car diffused into streams of traffic. The shapes of one cast out, spread into the coming night.