the last of september

So it is Tuesday, the last of September. It finally begins to feel as though fall just may arrive after all. Your weekend felt rushed for the simple lack of time, and longing to spend more of it putting new succulents in soil. You found yourself in Pac Bell Park saturday night with your friend ben, beneath the bright lights and constant hum of chatter. You rode bart, and at one point going under the water, the train was screeching and shaking so violently, that you pondered your death. At the game you asked him, “what do you think the odds are that everyone in the stadium will stop speaking at precisely the same instant, and not make a single sound for two seconds?” you both pensively shook your heads. He pinched his lips together without the use of hands, and replied, “ a trillion to one.” He then laughed and said, “oh goddammit, what the hell am I talking about? I have no fucking idea.” you laughed. And then it was Sunday. You spent much of the day with your friend greg talking about life I guess. That’s rather broad, but then so is conversation with friends you‘ve not seen for some time.. You played music with Kristina Sunday night. Monday you worked and read and went to see Interpol at the warfield. Oh how badly you long to play the warfield theater. You were still awake at 1:32 am reading Jim Harrison. “going off a deep end appears to be a requisite to doing anything of consequence in this life…” he writes. Alas, you hope that you can swim. Perhaps tonight you will drink wine, light candles, and work on new songs. Singing softly to yourself in the belly of fall. September.

or something

Jim Harrison writes, "I felt pleased that I had maintained my legs and wind by hours of daily walking in Chicago, mostly a device of curiosity and to ease my muddy brain which had drawn the conclusion that I had been called to be an artist but not necessarily a very good one." I have been wrestling with this quote since early yesterday morning, and I am still down on the floor searching for air. or something. and i still have no idea what to say.

intent

"it is difficult indeed for us to accept others and ourselves at the level of our intentions without noting the disparity between them and the way we actually live"
~ jim harrison

along the path of this everpresent search for truth, i often stumble it seems. for don't we all? today i will work and work. i will drive all about the east bay; windows down and music flooding the air. i will go to the city tonight to watch jimmy gnecco spin his magic web. this, dear reader, is truth. intended or not, the spirit that moves through his body is undeniable. it is intent, without past or future; only present. it is an expression of complete timelessness.

"triplets"

oh how i adore tom robbins~

i went to satan's house.
his mailbox was painted black.
a fleet of bonecrushers
was parked in his driveway.
the thorns on his rosebushes
were longer than shivs.
and sixty-six roosters scratched
in his front yard, their spurs
smoldering like cheap cigars.

i went to satan's house.
it was supposed to be an amway party.
i wanted a set of those
hard-as-hell steak knives.
the ones that can't tell the difference
between mama's sponge cake
and a block of rock cocaine.

i went to satan's house.
i felt a little out of place.
but satan's twin daughters soon put me at ease.
they tried on funny hats for me,
showed me jewels,
danced around my chair.
they read my fortune
in a bowl of ashes,
let me pet their dobermans,
and watch while they rinsed out their pink underthings.

i stopped by satan's house.
i just happened to be in the neighborhood.
satan came downstairs in a raiders jacket.
his aura was like burnt rubber,
but his grin could paint a sunrise
on a coal shed wall.
"i see you've met desire
and fulfillment," he said,
polishing his monocle with
a blood-flecked rag.
"regret is in the kitchen making coffee."

tom robbins

what have you become?

last night i dreamt that i was in some terribly strange house, with some terribly strange man, where i found a rather enormous green praying mantis. {another} i attempted to catch it, {upon the strange man's urging} but it was so large that the only container big enough was a brown paper bag. the problem was, that each time i tried to trick it into the bag, it would turn into two amazingly small, flea sized bugs {that incidentally looked nothing like a praying mantis} and scurry away. after much effort, i accidentally squashed and killed one of the tiny ones, then awoke filled with remorse. both upset for having killed the one, and for the other that remained behind. i asked kristina today if she had seen one in "real life" and she said yes as though they were as common to her as ants. last week, i was sitting in a parking lot in concord, and saw my first {as far as i recall} sitting well concealed in a bush. my god, what a beautiful creature. something from another world. playful and yet so dark and powerful. i just sat there and watched it for about a half an hour. and today the heat was with us again. oh, i am still longing for the onset of cold weather. especially so now, as aside from things continuing to fall off of my car, the air-conditioner has broken, and the vent spits nothing but hot air. oh my dear saturn, what have you become?

shhhhhhhhhhh

“Peace. Stillness. Silence. Some seek such perfect moments through meditation, treks in the wilderness, or sessions in an isolation tank...or even a lucky few who hold desk jobs at the BBC~ but they’re raising the alarm against the sounds of silence. “pin-drop syndrome” was uncovered last fall in the BBC accounting offices and is gaining ground as the latest mental disturbance in corporate culture. With hermetically sealed buildings, soundless technology, and aggressively boring workloads, some white-collar workers are finding office hubbub dropping to 20 decibels. It’s a level several sound experts have labeled “tranquility.” But silence equals death, as the old saying goes, so the BBC is taking necessary steps. Borrowing from Japanese innovation, the broadcaster will spend approx $4000.00 on “mutter machines” to replicate watercooler chatter and even outbursts of laughter~ presumably laughing with and not at the accountants. “{the machines} will play mutter which is a level of speech that is indistinguishable so that you don’t know what they are actually talking about,” says a BBC spokesman. “it’s low level and it works.” Ahhhhhh technology…bringing humanity to the workplace.”

~James MacKinnon

go home people, go home.

it has been the week of films. first the magdalene sisters, which was excellent. the first five minutes were to me, the very crux of what cinema is all about. virtually no dialogue, and instantly intense. i was at the edge of my seat in a matter of seconds. friday night was, mondays in the sun a spanish film starring javier bardem, who in my opinion is one of the greatest male actors that has ever graced the screen. his presence is absolutely transcendent. this film was spectacular...slow and languid and opaque. its depth, and its subtle and quiet screaming was beautiful and timeless. i am tempted to see it again. and last night, a failed effort to see dirty pretty things. well, not failed, but i arrived late due to a failed dinner attempt. the cheeseboard ran out, after my waiting in line for 30 minutes. plan b was slow in gaining momentum. i find that going to movies alone is such a bittersweet experience. lonely but fulfilling. and today, they have blocked off my street for a parade and street fair. while theoretically, i like the idea of parades and street fairs, and the blocking off of streets especially, it has become an invasive bug crawling around beneath my skin. it was okay for the first 20 minutes or so at 10 am, but it has grown painfully tiresome; in part due to the fact that there is a group of irish dancers just below my window doing the same dance to the same song all day. go home people, go home.

of gold

"He was the first man that Fermina Daza ever heard urinate. She heard him on their wedding night, while she lay prostrate with seasickness in the stateroom on the ship that was carrying them to France, and the sound of his stallion's stream seemed so potent, so replete with authority, that it increased her terror of the devastation to come. That memory often returned to her as the years weakened the stream, for she never could resign herself to his wetting the rim of the toilet bowl each time he used it. Dr. Urbino tried to convince her, with arguments readily understandable to anyone who wished to understand them, that the mishap was not repeated every day through carelessness on his part, as she insisted, but because of organic reasons: as a young man his stream was so defined and so direct that when he was at school he won contests for marksmanship in filling bottles, but with the ravages of age it was not only decreasing, it was also becoming oblique and scattered, and had at last turned into a fantastic fountain, impossible to control despite his many efforts to direct it. He would say: "The toilet must have been invented by someone who knew nothing about men." He contributed to domestic peace with a quotidian act that was more humiliating than humble: he wiped the rim of the bowl with toilet paper each time he used it. She knew, but never said anything as long as the ammoniac fumes were not too strong in the bathroom, and then she proclaimed, as if she had uncovered a crime: "This stinks like a rabbit hutch." On the eve of old age this physical difficulty inspired Dr. Urbino with the ultimate solution: he urinated sitting down, as she did, which kept the bowl clean and him in a state of grace."
~Gabriel Garcia Marquez

floccinaucinihilipilfication

yesterday as i was driving, i saw a guy riding a golden bike. a memory from college came crashing in, about my own golden bike. it was an absolute piece of shit, and a can of gold spraypaint goes such a long way. wait, perhaps you would all prefer that i say 'a can of gold spraypaint goes quite a long way and is rather useful.' ha ha ho ho he he. i believe the greatest element of my bicycle, was the dull grey tires. the bike had rather strange rims, and as fate would have it, i walked out of the bike shop feeling frustrated that no tires would fit, glanced up and saw a wheelchair store across the street. voila. the memory makes me miss that time of my life...the ability to ride a bike everywhere. i read something yesterday in a jim harrison novel {whom, in the midst of this hemingway talk, i highly recommend. or for that matter, i also recommend going to christian kiefer's site and reading the first 50 pages of his novel titled 'out of iron'...if you like it, i suppose he'd let you read the rest.} anyway, harrison's character was talking about the idea that the greatest psychological detriment of the automobile, has been it's profound impact on the way in which we perceive time and distance. this of course spoken by a character who would never have conceived of the rampant environmental destruction we see today. the character proposed the floccinaucinihilipilfication of cars in general. there big word lovers. top that.

some things, they stay the same

Do I feel grateful for the privileges I’ve been afforded as a citizen of the united states? Deeply, immeasurably so...Hence, my arguments. Whether you john or anyone else, agree or disagree with me, all of my feelings stem from the fact that I believe the united states to be one of the more liberated and incredible places on earth {from what I know}, with such vast potential. My vehement thoughts are because I fear that over time, those freedoms {that are the very foundation of this place} are being silently and not so silently eroded. As christian kiefer says, there isn’t enough poetry. As for the need to prove myself...that’s just it john, EXACTLY IT. I have no need whatsoever to prove anything to you. and of course, i believe i have made clear that everyone is welcome here. apology accepted. As for prop 54, {lest people misunderstand} prop 54 would effectively bring an end to programs such as affirmative action etc., and would have a terrible effect on the advancement of human rights in the state of california. though the people behind this, are busy arguing that we shouldn’t judge people on the basis of race, it is the extreme rights’ way of attempting to pass a bill that is blatantly racist. A veil if you will. if one looks at the bill in depth, one would discover that it will strip many of the rights of people of color, and is quite frankly the worst thing for the advancement of civil rights in many, many years…..I suggest you read further. somehow, {aside from having read about it extensively} I figure that if all of the organized groups of people of color are against prop 54, it would have a detrimental effect on their well being. You are misinformed sir rensing. Cheers to christian for understanding my Mark Twain leanings. Often, the absurd gives such meaning to our lives. Perhaps Gabriel Garcia Marquez would have been brazen enough to suggest emu on the bridge. Or giraffes. Blue ones. And dave. Dave, sir dave. I owe you a letter don’t I? Comics. Yes, Brilliant. To the casual observer: I could care less about being the mediator of this place. It doesn’t want or need one…this gentle chaos is absolutely beautiful. Beautiful I tell you. And of course, you all seem to forget, that while I do keep this journal here, this website is about my band. That is after all, why this place exists. That is what I do. what we do. Thursday night rather than sitting around mediating my website, I was watching Daniel Lanois play at café du nord. Wow. He was indeed spectacular. I gave him a disc with new songs, hoping that he might mix our new record. Oh the dreams I dream. Tentatively titled “the work of kings” the new record is an exploration of home and identity; both what those concepts mean to me, and how they relate to one another. We recorded 21 songs and are in the process of adding and removing things to bring them alive. With fingers crossed, we will release an ep sometime this fall with four of them, and hopefully be done with a full length record before the first of next year. And in the midst of all that, we have finally finished “I am not in spain,” my loose interpretation of Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls. perhaps we should be discussing that here. Robert Jordan. Pablo. Maria. Perhaps we should be discussing the two mp3s from that record we recently added to the mp3 page of this site. Perhaps we should be exploring Hemingway’s themes in the book. If you find yourselves curious, a description of the record is on the discography page of this site. Go there, and click on the record cover to read. or, don’t. it is that simple, unlike most things in life. yes, Tom Robbins was right.

“some things in life may change, and some things, they stay the same...”

~Damien rice

laughing in the autumn

and yesterday, in the late afternoon sun, rosie and i walked slowly through the hills of oakland. sometimes i find that walking a dog is one of the more peaceful and meditative things one could possibly do. i read yesterday that they have installed telephones on the golden gate bridge, that when picked up go directly to a suicide hotline. how strange the modernity of our world. i found myself thinking that perhaps they should have dogs roaming about as well, begging for affection from these broken souls. so many uses we humans find for our magnificent creations. as for this creation..... well. my absence has many reasons. first, i was really hoping to see that one post get up over 50. i'm silly like that. secondly, i've been quite busy with work and recording. third, sometimes {as those of you that have been here for a while have certainly noticed} i just don't feel like writing. fourth, with regards to the argument/discussion about globalization/corporate america, as i said before, i believe that granny d stated things just about as perfectly as could be stated...then of course followed up by our dear mr kiefer. i couldn't possibly have written any of it better than he. as the discussion devolved into a rather loose {at times tight and direct} assesment of my character and actions, i had/have no need whatsoever to get involved. with regards to john, it's like this: i disagree strongly with john's political opinions, but feel equally as strong that no one should be censored. as for his repeated personal insults, they mean nothing to me. they are incorrect, immature, and unnecessary...frankly, i think he is making a fool of himself, and i find it rather humorous. as for a person or people taking over my website? good god, how fucking absurd can you all be? but alas, they grey skies beg for my attention. the clouds will clear, the sun will break, and i will drive about watching the world spin.

" i don't know why i'm telling these things, these places, these moments, the smoke from those bonfires. nobody really needs to tremble at alien earthquakes and truly nobody cares about anyone else's youth. so i'm not asking for pardon. i'm in my usual place. i have a tree with so many leaves that although i don't claim immortality, i can laugh at you in the autumn."

~ pablo neruda