Lost March.

[Music: Blood Brothers]


With my recent addiction to Whitney's brilliant side-project Neon Blonde, I had forgotten how brilliant his Blood Brothers work is. Namely their last album, 2004's Crimes.

--

Save (Excerpt from my Tails in Red Ink).

Testosterone harvesters reap the innards of earth, plowing endless fields of elevated soil populated with a seed only paralleled in worth by a chest of ancient artifacts from the tomb of some rank ghost king. Enduring southward, through forests of sullen pines lined alongside the remnants of spirited battles, feathered medleys altercate upon epic flowerbeds; here rests the thrusts of pelvises through the insane heat of an apocalyptic dawn. The body feeds on letdowns and events reimbursing the mind for its own minute instances of pre-occupational exoneration, a basic interdependence of misplaced veneration. Utopian realms obviously shun this concept of a well-fertilized (to the point that individuals maintain an equal share) conceptionsphere being that their very mission statements call for the release of mental fluids to repopulate, disregarding intercourse as an act of imbecilic irreverence. I, being born into a legion bearing an adjacent mindset, should have been readily prepared for the onslaught of non-political treatise that the procreative clergy would pile upon me. I was not, and paid my dues in the form of verbal embarrassment and infantile inquiries. I soon vowed, when the time permitted, to return to my studies amongst the lama consortium and clear my skyward debts.

“Come through these tilted walls, your altar lies beyond,” whispered Kaline as we rapidly walked the length of the hallway towards the ceremonial stages.

“Do your people have a limit to the length of the proceedings? Does morning suffice for multiple sacrifices?” I said.

“Time leaves our ranks when the curtains close.”

“I see.” I guessed my tone was far too somber for her to go unnoticed; she shot me an awkward glance and slowed down her pace.

“Is your collar hurting you, Ekim? Do you thirst?”

“I drank of the stream before you arrived, and, yes, this collar is chafing not to mention cold as a glacier.”

“It will warm to a comet before you realize.” I did not know then what she meant, but I took it that my head would not be removed by way of blade, but rather by extreme heat.

Surf the Black.

[Music: The Advantage]



Is He Dead?

Argumentation, far from a lost art-- but it has really become more than just a prelude to violence, they way it was in the good old days. And there's a big difference in how this one or that might reckon the relative worth of time: time-to-quality or time-to-result or time-to-the-motherfucking-k etc.

The amount of logical twine it would take to bind certain wisdoms to reality would bust my budget. I'm not required to have an opinion about it, I can just understand it and leave. Thinking about thinking like what other people are thinking about is paralytic philosophy beyond my budget. The fact that it is statistically effective is another question entirely and not one of interest to me. I mean: I eat however the numbers go-- I don't mean that statistics aren't interesting.

Numbers are proper things to read today. Seeing some words printed in public used to feel like an idea or temperament had finally been pressurized and heated to a superlative hardness. Suitable for contemplation, climbing. But I guess people were dumber then, too--they couldn't help but express their opinions, expressions were presumed to be part of an ongoing conversation.

One of the reasons the work still isn't staged often is because it makes enormous demands on the lead character, requiring her to sing almost non-stop for two hours, and throughout a very broad range. Maybe the time is right for a re-examination of this work. In a changing world, we want more singers to have control over your own life. It was a crude beginning psalm meant to be adapted, I hope-- not adopted. Or maybe they really missed the boat. They had a window and they had to say something.

--

Closets.

From time to time, it is required of me to interact in a little game set out by persons with the capability to withhold from me the very elements that allow me to survive. I am allocated, it seems, just enough survival to be encouraged that I cannot know, cannot precisely name the sources from which I derive what appear to be randomly earned stipends and then as part of the deal, from time to time, I have to run down a certain sequence of events that I assume I'm to believe are authentic and not in the least causally related to my precarious survival but which I sometimes admit to myself might be more crucially linked to it than the supposed work I supposedly do.

Once I got a phone message telling me to be at a radio station on a Sunday afternoon in the summer. I drove out there and was met by this guy, guy #1. The parking lot was empty, the offices were empty, and the studios were empty. As guy #1 escorted me into the place and down its halls I looked around and saw that it was outfitted with excellent equipment, that it had a tower out back and a dish. We go into a studio and I sit in front of the mic and we do a long interview. Guy #1 never switches on a tape or gives any kind of signal to any kind of engineer; no signal is ever given to us. He does not even put on headphones. We do the interview and I leave.

Two years later, when I'm playing at this bar I see guy #1 with girl #1. I have accidentally met his gaze so I wave but guy #1 doesn't acknowledge me.

One year later, I'm sent up to a residence on Central Park in New York to film some scenes on the edge of a stone parapet. I'm going to dress in a black body suit and crawl around at the top of a tall building. The photographer answers the door, it is girl #1. We go up and do the bits. We shoot for about 4 hours and not once does she stop to change film.

That same year I'm in St.Louis and after the show guy #1 talks to me while I'm packing up my equipment. He says he flew in from Sault Saint Marie (?!) just for the show. I thank him for taking the time and I say: "I hope you enjoyed the show." I should add that he didn't come up to me like he knew me and I didn't act friendly with him-- so I wasn't sure if this was guy #1 in the moment but I knew it had been guy #1 when I thought about it after he left.

What does this say about the world and the intentions of its most arrogant, persistent strivers? One of the reasons the work still isn't staged often is because it makes enormous demands on the lead character: Us, Me, Them. Overall, blue volcanos became that way from ash plumes creating vaccums to suck in tropical birds. All the colors mixed to form a light azure. Believe it.

That's What She Said.

Tahoe was great, despite the bus ride up where some guy vomitted in a fast food bag and caused the whole vehicle to reek horribly. Trevor and I listened to Dane Cook the whole way to Sacramento to rid ourselves of the stench and boredom. Alex killed people. Many stories to tell, not enough time.

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