Bejeezus Magazine posted my essay "The Real" on their website (originally in issue #11). Enjoy!
You'll need to scroll up a bit - the page I linked actually goes to the middle of the article.
And while you're at the Bejeezus site, surf around. There's plenty of good stuff here.
Peace.
February 28, 2009
February 20, 2009
Drive
Drive
reaching out, grabbing hold
a handful of animated air
when yr rumbling along,
80 miles per hour
on a two-lane road, not some fucking interstate
& maybe you’re roaring through a pine forest
early in the morning
riding the black tar ribbon
burnt into a forest of pine
you’ve got a ’72 Impala with a bored-out 350 under you
you’ve got coffee in one of those cheap travel mugs
& the day is sideways . . .
and the sun through the pines
as you scream south
is a flicker film –
there is a horizon always in front
and toward it we run,
always
speed is its own justification
it’s the noise, man
that’s life
north lower Michigan pine forests
a flicker
the oaks & maples of southern Indiana
a crazy flashing
like state road 45
between Bloomington and Nashville
duck down on Tunnel Rd
to get to the levee across Lake Lemon
flowing like a rain choked river through the curves of 45
screaming across the lane-and-a-half road over the levee
at a minimum of 90 mph
the lights on the opposite shore flashing on the lake
death is never real
so life has to be
blow the speakers
blow the engine
at the end
never leave a car with its suspension intact
reaching out, grabbing hold
a handful of animated air
when yr rumbling along,
80 miles per hour
on a two-lane road, not some fucking interstate
& maybe you’re roaring through a pine forest
early in the morning
riding the black tar ribbon
burnt into a forest of pine
you’ve got a ’72 Impala with a bored-out 350 under you
you’ve got coffee in one of those cheap travel mugs
& the day is sideways . . .
and the sun through the pines
as you scream south
is a flicker film –
there is a horizon always in front
and toward it we run,
always
speed is its own justification
it’s the noise, man
that’s life
north lower Michigan pine forests
a flicker
the oaks & maples of southern Indiana
a crazy flashing
like state road 45
between Bloomington and Nashville
duck down on Tunnel Rd
to get to the levee across Lake Lemon
flowing like a rain choked river through the curves of 45
screaming across the lane-and-a-half road over the levee
at a minimum of 90 mph
the lights on the opposite shore flashing on the lake
death is never real
so life has to be
blow the speakers
blow the engine
at the end
never leave a car with its suspension intact
February 15, 2009
I'm So Effing Cold
Computer problems here persist. Posts will continue to be sporadic, mainly because I hate typing long form essays on laptops. Keep with me, though - I'll be back on my horse soon.
Notes from a recent phone conversation with Matthew Pickerill Esq.:
Running down to Etown mid January the numbers on the dash hit negative territory. I was kinda curious how the display would look below zero.
The first week of February the temps brushed up against 70 Fahrenheit. Between those two events I was nothing but cold and miserable. I understand now why old people move to Florida and Arizona . . . besides taxes, that is. I'm getting old, and I can't handle the cold.
It's not as if I were reared in International Falls or something, but Northern Indiana is a lot colder than this. I used to bundle up & hike across campus in brutal South Bend winters without much thought. Hell, I used to enjoy temperatures around zero (yes, I would even have called it invigorating). But now, the cold is killing me. It seems as if the damn Maxx will never heat up - or, more accurately, it always manages to heat up about five minutes before I get to work. The electric seat warmers help a little, but not enough. I am so effing cold.
The cold shifts me into another sphere. I used to enjoy the clean high, the adrenalin rush of the body battling the cold. Now, it's just pain. I feel like I'm in the bunker. Cold shuts me down, makes me hate.
Fortunately, there's not much of this pain left for the season. I expect one last winter blast (traditionally around tournament time), then we'll be done for a bit. After a nice spring alternating wonderful weather with horrible storms and destruction, we'll be into the heat.
Until then, I'm done bitching about the weather.
In rotation:
Conlon Nancarrow - Complete Studies for Player Piano Vol. 3
Carl Ruggles - Sun Treader, Lilacs, Portals, Evocations
Henry Cowell - Toccanta
Hot Tuna - Double Dose
Frank Zappa - The Grand Wazoo
John Cage - Indeterminacy
Arizona Amp and Alternator
Effigies - Ink
Sun City Girls - Flute and Mask
Shuggie Otis - Inspiration Information
John Fahey - Blind Joe Death, The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death, America
Skip James - Complete Early Recordings
Josh White - Free and Equal Blues
Green on Red - Gas, Food, Lodging
Gun Club - Fire of Love
Charlie Patton - Father of the Delta Blues
Scrawl - Nature Film
Deep Purple - Made in Japan
The Fall - Heads Roll, Live at the Witch Trials
2/6/09 revised 2/15/09
Notes from a recent phone conversation with Matthew Pickerill Esq.:
Running down to Etown mid January the numbers on the dash hit negative territory. I was kinda curious how the display would look below zero.
The first week of February the temps brushed up against 70 Fahrenheit. Between those two events I was nothing but cold and miserable. I understand now why old people move to Florida and Arizona . . . besides taxes, that is. I'm getting old, and I can't handle the cold.
It's not as if I were reared in International Falls or something, but Northern Indiana is a lot colder than this. I used to bundle up & hike across campus in brutal South Bend winters without much thought. Hell, I used to enjoy temperatures around zero (yes, I would even have called it invigorating). But now, the cold is killing me. It seems as if the damn Maxx will never heat up - or, more accurately, it always manages to heat up about five minutes before I get to work. The electric seat warmers help a little, but not enough. I am so effing cold.
The cold shifts me into another sphere. I used to enjoy the clean high, the adrenalin rush of the body battling the cold. Now, it's just pain. I feel like I'm in the bunker. Cold shuts me down, makes me hate.
Fortunately, there's not much of this pain left for the season. I expect one last winter blast (traditionally around tournament time), then we'll be done for a bit. After a nice spring alternating wonderful weather with horrible storms and destruction, we'll be into the heat.
Until then, I'm done bitching about the weather.
In rotation:
Conlon Nancarrow - Complete Studies for Player Piano Vol. 3
Carl Ruggles - Sun Treader, Lilacs, Portals, Evocations
Henry Cowell - Toccanta
Hot Tuna - Double Dose
Frank Zappa - The Grand Wazoo
John Cage - Indeterminacy
Arizona Amp and Alternator
Effigies - Ink
Sun City Girls - Flute and Mask
Shuggie Otis - Inspiration Information
John Fahey - Blind Joe Death, The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death, America
Skip James - Complete Early Recordings
Josh White - Free and Equal Blues
Green on Red - Gas, Food, Lodging
Gun Club - Fire of Love
Charlie Patton - Father of the Delta Blues
Scrawl - Nature Film
Deep Purple - Made in Japan
The Fall - Heads Roll, Live at the Witch Trials
2/6/09 revised 2/15/09
February 7, 2009
Djangology
Djangology
Django before his left hand was crushed -
annihilating beauty,
Medusa sound's perfection
turns all it touches to stone.
Notes falling like burning sleet
define parameters of impossible song,
of crystalline sound, irreducible,
a shimmering specter on which none can bear to look,
the face of God.
It was God who crushed Django's hand
out of love.
Humanity has no room for such perfection.
Humanity demands more.
Django before his left hand was crushed -
annihilating beauty,
Medusa sound's perfection
turns all it touches to stone.
Notes falling like burning sleet
define parameters of impossible song,
of crystalline sound, irreducible,
a shimmering specter on which none can bear to look,
the face of God.
It was God who crushed Django's hand
out of love.
Humanity has no room for such perfection.
Humanity demands more.
January 30, 2009
Ice Ice Baby
HAH! Joke's on you . . . now the song is running through your head.
The Port of Butchertown master computer has crashed, so there won't be any significant posting going on here for a couple weeks. When I get back, I'll probably have a couple new pieces ready to post (printed longhand on a legal pad - just the way I like it). Until then, be safe.
The Port of Butchertown master computer has crashed, so there won't be any significant posting going on here for a couple weeks. When I get back, I'll probably have a couple new pieces ready to post (printed longhand on a legal pad - just the way I like it). Until then, be safe.
January 25, 2009
Sonata for Crazy Ass Traffic
The TBW! posse was rolling up to Chicago (from Bloomington, late 80's) for a show at Club Dreamerz. Tony was living there at the time, the rest of us were in Bton. We ran up 65 (natch), stopping at a gas station just north of Lafayette to fill up & grab the $2.99 gas station cassette that would be our talisman for the trip.
I had, of course, heard Black Sabbath all the way through high school, and I had an 8 track mix that I had made from a friend's LPs . . . but after living with an Ozzy freak for a couple years in South Bend, I had let Sabbath recede into the background. But here, with G__ riding shotgun in the S-15 and the bed full of ramshackle rock band equipment, Sabbath seemed more appropriate. The S-15 in question had the infamous "treble kicker" stereo setup,
We hit the Dan Ryan around rush hour and, as is the road trip code for TBW!, we ran in tandem. Whitaker was in the lead, and I was the trailer. When he wanted to go, he signaled, and it was my job to jump in the lane before him and let him jump in front of me . . . sort of a rolling pick, if you will. It always worked well for us: Matt paid attention to where we needed to go, and I paid attention to traffic. Now, traffic on the Dan Ryan rolls hard, but we were rolling harder - 75-80 mph bumper to bumper, and some of the moves were beatific. The whole time, we were blowing Paranoid, and G__ was sparking a joint (though I was, by this time, eschewing the sacrament). Every so often, I would hear a "Whoa-ahh" from the shotgun seat after a particularly splendid bit of traffic management - if you know G__, you can picture the scene . . .
Paranoid became the first significant sonata for crazy ass traffic.
After dropping down off the freeway, we made the radical switch from Black Sabbath to Hank Williams. Somehow we lost Whitaker and ended up in Chicago's barrio. I sometimes imagine the scene through the eyes of the pachucos on the street that day . . . two big ugly white guys in truck with Indiana plates and a bunch of cheap guitars, drums and amps in the back, windows down on a cold day, blaring old school C & W at a ridiculous volume . . . We ended up finding Dreamerz without too much more delay, and that ends up being another story.
* * * * *
I roll out of the house 'round about 7 am these days. I have to do the square-around to get down the one way streets from Butchertown to 65 South (again, I-65), negotiate the early rush hour in the 'Ville, and run down through the hills to make it to Elizabethtown at 8 am. I've got the hard left merge from Story onto 64 then immediately onto 65, but since I'm heading south, I have one less hard merge than I had before. At this time of day, things are thick running down to the Watterson, and past that to the UPS depot, and to the Ford plants on Fern Valley Road. Beyond Fern Valley, things thin out, and past the Gene Snyder, it's the rural run down to Etown. A few days ago, during my maiden week of runs down south, the intensity of the traffic mirrored (a slightly diminished version of) the run all those years ago on the Dan Ryan. The song playing at the time? Blue Oyster Cult's "The Red and the Black".
"The Red and the Black" became a significant sonata for crazy ass traffic.
What is it with those seventies bands and crazy ass traffic? I had a whole fistfull of CDs in the back, and there were plenty of options to roll with, but BOC just seemed to get the job done . . . not that I rely on it as a morning soundtrack, but the groove, drive, and aggression seemed just perfect for the job (unlike most of the jazz I had - too diffuse - or the classical - too abstract - or the nu-metal - too fucking fast).
There is, apparently, a rhythm in 70's hard rock/metal that lives somewhere between 70 and 90 mph.
* * * * *
So, here's the most recent playlist:
Blue Oyster Cult - Super Hits
Alice Cooper - Greatest Hits (the Seventies compilation)
Charles Ives - The Holidays Symphony
John Coltrane - Ascension
Sun Ra - "Stars Fell on Alabama"
Duke Ellington - Black, Brown, and Beige
Eric Dolphy - Live at the Five Spot, Vol. 1
Pig Destroyer - Terrorizer
Suspected Terrorists - s/t
Deep Purple - The Very Best Of
Arto Lindsay - Aggregates 1-26
Ornette Coleman - Live at the Golden Circle Vol. 1
MX-80 Sound - Out of the Tunnel/Crowd Control
Boris - Akuma No Uta
The Scientists - Absolute
Until next time, stay beautiful.
Quick aside here . . . is this something y'all do when you're on the road? I know that the posse would often partially rely on kismet for road trip soundtracks, be it Art Bell or gas station cassettes & CDs. The rules on the gas station cassette/CD talisman were: it couldn't be something you owned but didn't bring with you, and preferably something you hadn't heard before . . . or else that GREAT album which somehow always eluded you. Also, it had to cost substantially less than you would have paid for it in a real record store, and ideally, would have been something that you wouldn't be able to find anywhere else, like one of those Johnny Paycheck trucker's special editions. Tony's biggest score was an Abbey Lincoln cassette he got on one of his many AZ trips (or maybe that was Matt; they were both on the trip). My three most memorable: the copy of Alex Chilton's Set that I grabbed just before Tony, James Barber, and I headed out to Arizona for the annual Easter pilgrimage (though I obtained that on a hasty run through Ear-X-tacy right before I hit the road . . . does that count, since it's a real record store?); a Leadbelly cassette I found on the way down to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival with Brian Kearney and a vanload of paintings; and the cassette I grabbed on this trip.If memory serves, Whitaker had most of the band in his 'stang (a late 70's model, moderately under appreciated by aficionados), and he found a Byrds cassette . . . which, I must admit, until recently, I sneered at - I have lately come to a greater appreciation of the Byrds. On the other hand, I was rolling with G__, and my tape for the trip was Black Sabbath's Paranoid.
I had, of course, heard Black Sabbath all the way through high school, and I had an 8 track mix that I had made from a friend's LPs . . . but after living with an Ozzy freak for a couple years in South Bend, I had let Sabbath recede into the background. But here, with G__ riding shotgun in the S-15 and the bed full of ramshackle rock band equipment, Sabbath seemed more appropriate. The S-15 in question had the infamous "treble kicker" stereo setup,
(Me & Cosby & Whitaker used to cruise up and down Kirkwood, in the early days of the boomin' auto system craze, with the treble kicker up full to some white noise punk rock, usually early Husker Du, and it was so fucking loud . . . all the heads could feel their stereos [low end], but they could only hear mine [high end], and it was really fucking with them)which was a cheap cassette stereo run through a cheap but powerful booster amp which was in turn fed to decent but trebly Kenwood speakers, all wired together with hand-twisted joints covered in black vinyl electrical tape. The Sabbath was searing on the treble kicker.
We hit the Dan Ryan around rush hour and, as is the road trip code for TBW!, we ran in tandem. Whitaker was in the lead, and I was the trailer. When he wanted to go, he signaled, and it was my job to jump in the lane before him and let him jump in front of me . . . sort of a rolling pick, if you will. It always worked well for us: Matt paid attention to where we needed to go, and I paid attention to traffic. Now, traffic on the Dan Ryan rolls hard, but we were rolling harder - 75-80 mph bumper to bumper, and some of the moves were beatific. The whole time, we were blowing Paranoid, and G__ was sparking a joint (though I was, by this time, eschewing the sacrament). Every so often, I would hear a "Whoa-ahh" from the shotgun seat after a particularly splendid bit of traffic management - if you know G__, you can picture the scene . . .
Paranoid became the first significant sonata for crazy ass traffic.
After dropping down off the freeway, we made the radical switch from Black Sabbath to Hank Williams. Somehow we lost Whitaker and ended up in Chicago's barrio. I sometimes imagine the scene through the eyes of the pachucos on the street that day . . . two big ugly white guys in truck with Indiana plates and a bunch of cheap guitars, drums and amps in the back, windows down on a cold day, blaring old school C & W at a ridiculous volume . . . We ended up finding Dreamerz without too much more delay, and that ends up being another story.
* * * * *
I roll out of the house 'round about 7 am these days. I have to do the square-around to get down the one way streets from Butchertown to 65 South (again, I-65), negotiate the early rush hour in the 'Ville, and run down through the hills to make it to Elizabethtown at 8 am. I've got the hard left merge from Story onto 64 then immediately onto 65, but since I'm heading south, I have one less hard merge than I had before. At this time of day, things are thick running down to the Watterson, and past that to the UPS depot, and to the Ford plants on Fern Valley Road. Beyond Fern Valley, things thin out, and past the Gene Snyder, it's the rural run down to Etown. A few days ago, during my maiden week of runs down south, the intensity of the traffic mirrored (a slightly diminished version of) the run all those years ago on the Dan Ryan. The song playing at the time? Blue Oyster Cult's "The Red and the Black".
"The Red and the Black" became a significant sonata for crazy ass traffic.
What is it with those seventies bands and crazy ass traffic? I had a whole fistfull of CDs in the back, and there were plenty of options to roll with, but BOC just seemed to get the job done . . . not that I rely on it as a morning soundtrack, but the groove, drive, and aggression seemed just perfect for the job (unlike most of the jazz I had - too diffuse - or the classical - too abstract - or the nu-metal - too fucking fast).
There is, apparently, a rhythm in 70's hard rock/metal that lives somewhere between 70 and 90 mph.
* * * * *
So, here's the most recent playlist:
Blue Oyster Cult - Super Hits
Alice Cooper - Greatest Hits (the Seventies compilation)
Charles Ives - The Holidays Symphony
John Coltrane - Ascension
Sun Ra - "Stars Fell on Alabama"
Duke Ellington - Black, Brown, and Beige
Eric Dolphy - Live at the Five Spot, Vol. 1
Pig Destroyer - Terrorizer
Suspected Terrorists - s/t
Deep Purple - The Very Best Of
Arto Lindsay - Aggregates 1-26
Ornette Coleman - Live at the Golden Circle Vol. 1
MX-80 Sound - Out of the Tunnel/Crowd Control
Boris - Akuma No Uta
The Scientists - Absolute
Until next time, stay beautiful.
January 22, 2009
Slant Rhyme of the Week
On the back of a TARC bus:
Son in jail? Call Waddell!
along with the phone number of the honorable Mr. Waddell, attorney at law, all transposed over a huge photo of Mr. Wadell's grinning mug.
Of course, just north of Louisville, this is a more straight rhyme - as when "jail" rhymes with "gel". Or further south, when "jail" becomes a two syllable word ("jay-uhl", long "a" sound) and Waddell becomes a three syllable word ("Wha-dahy-uhl", short "a" then long "a").
Stay classy, Louisville.
Son in jail? Call Waddell!
along with the phone number of the honorable Mr. Waddell, attorney at law, all transposed over a huge photo of Mr. Wadell's grinning mug.
Of course, just north of Louisville, this is a more straight rhyme - as when "jail" rhymes with "gel". Or further south, when "jail" becomes a two syllable word ("jay-uhl", long "a" sound) and Waddell becomes a three syllable word ("Wha-dahy-uhl", short "a" then long "a").
Stay classy, Louisville.
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