feedback

I was of the mind to tell you but then
there was a pause, a moment or so,
then there was another one, and then
I guess the words sort of passed, and
anyhow you don’t want to hear that the
cigarettes you hate sort of feel like
progress.

And I tried to tell you the other day,
when we were talking about coffee,
(remember?) but right then you were
smiling and it’s pretty difficult to
segue from coffee to what I felt
like saturday morning, and
anyhow you don’t want to feel
responsible.

And they say it feels better when
it’s not just your own voice, and the
echoes, and the accusations, but
the gamble hasn’t paid off not once
not ever, and to be honest it’s
gotten way easier to deal with
now that I hear it everyday, just over
and over and over and over

va vie via

pour another cup
I will
fill your fingers up
and you will
cradle all the glass just like
so many times before

and to think you thought
we fought for all the best of intentions
good god, babe, i bet
you never thought at all

so pour another glass
you say
and strike my favorite match
and we’ll play
poet v musician till the
bottle opens up

and to think we fought
the haves and nots to buy a little time
god damn, I guess I lost
the race this time

so la dee da, la dee dee,
is all that came to be
and a cloying sense of scansion
keeps you tearing at your hair
oh la dee da, la dee de,
la dee la dee la dee dee,
la dee dee

Clipped Phrase

I feel the need to do somethi-
I have the need to say som-
I must I must I will I will
I am now, right now, right there, see?
I was just saying-

to the brunette (i think)

She was singing something sexy
about saltwater and drowning
and I’m guessing it was a metaphor
but I’m not very good at that
sort of thing
but still I bought her a drink
think it was bourbon
we talked it out
Three cigarettes later
I’m walkin out
and she’s never gonna think of me again
but she’s gonna remember the toast we made
“to under appreciated intellectual pursuits!” I cried
as our glasses clinked and the bar lights shimmied and dimmed low low oh
man my friend, bar man, don’t give me another
because this man he don’t understand-
the love of wisdom’s not about who said what
how many hundred years ago
it’s about the common man
the common life and how to live it
how to get what you’re given and give it back better
or at the very least well loved and well used
through the abuse of all these strangers.

Sunn O))), The Decemberists, and the Importance of Aural Stimulation

It is currently the opening hour of tomorrow by my reckoning.
As I type I feel somehow…washed. As though something happened to scour the detritus of lingering musical memory and rewrite vast swathes of it. Neurological defrag has run its course, and I am aware of a segment of time in which I was not directly conscious of my surroundings. I remember feeling a rhythmless, ordered caco/eu-phony…that being the Sunn O))) concert. There was a fire alarm, and the horn strobes that accompany said alarm, and the cherry-antiseptic smell of the fog, the copious fog, the billowing transcendental fog fog fog. There were robed figures, and a hoary faceless creature speakingchantingsermonizing from the fog’s thick pulpit. There was a bound burlap sackcloth creature, all antlers and sticks and was?that?blood? beside the bulbous hideobeautiful claw that clutched the microphone that shook and spit and wailed things heard not since before man and like-as-not after, and there was a curious harmony to the visions and scents and currents of rumble and buzz and rattle felt throughout the skin, a curious harmony not heard but felt in vibrations and less-than-semitone beat tones, a sub-bass choir, a primordial memory of things felt when creation had not quite come about, memories of a holy violence without beginning or clear delineation, memories universal.

As for the Decemberists, well, a different story altogether. The Hazards of Love being the first set, we (Neil and Rachel Calvin, the best of company) saw from near perfect vantage, first balcony and near to center-on. MSSR Meloy and company played masterfully throughout, particular highpoints being the eighth track on the album (The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid), the sixth (“The Queen’s Approach”), the tenth (“The Rake’s Song”), and the sixteenth and seventeenth (“The Wanting Comes In Waves (Reprise)” and “The Hazards of Love 4″, respectively. I am reminded of the modern invention of separating musical performance from movement and audience involvement- during the Hazards portion of the performance, there was certainly a social expectation to remain seated and for the most part still. I’m curious as to the birth of this notion- music is enjoyed only the more for responding physically to it, be it in the form of dancing or any other response. I’m not upset by any means, it seems the music was written for the concert hall-theatre setting as opposed to rock clubs, just a sidenote, I guess. The second half of the show, however, became far too exciting for myself and many others to remain still. “Billy Liar” incited a joyous mad singing dash down the balcony stairs past befuddled Classic Center personnel (NB: the young professionals on staff were visibly displeased, however, the older wiser lady nearest the smoking entrance smiled beatifically at the sight of us nigh-prancing to the music, truly, which is the youthful mind?) to the house-left aisles, wherein a dance party ensued. We all knew the words, we’d all sang them before, we’d all danced the same child’s dance of a culture somehow ignorant of dancepureblissful music+motion despite all of our “sophistications” THOUGH I DO DIGRESS, as soon the jackbooted guard stationed there soon bullied us back to a more dignified concertgoing manner. Not before the esteemed Mr. Meloy directed the entire crowd into a three part choir singing the bumpbumpbahdeedahs at the close of “Billy Liar”. We were treated to a grand reenactment of the birth of Colin’s worst-ever song, “Dracula’s Daughter”, and the subsequent birth of R.E.M. upon The Laird Hisself’s single majestic tear falling upon Peter Buck several years before the aforementioned song ever came about.

Afterwards there was a spot of drinking and a sprightly walk home, yes sprightly, yours truly, with all his mass, felt absolutely sprightly after the show, grinning broadbeam grins and feeling as refined asyouplease for having had the night’s entertainment.

As to the importance of aural stimulation? If you don’t know by now, you never will.

Skin and Scales

Lyrics by Garrett Macfalda & Paul Moon, Guitar by Paul Moon

Apologies to Jeff Mangum.

“Skin and Scales”

My friend I’ve got regrets
And I will loathe them till I die
In a sun beached field of flowers
Where I will boil into the sky

And that rattlesnake he loves you
For the venom in your eyes
But he knows the truth will have you
Swelling up to your surprise

(Chorus)
Some hearts have teeth
Your enemies
Will love you just as
tenderly
As the tongue that’s traced it’s way through hell
To slip its sinner self beneath your
skin and scales

Some feelings you will fear
And some of them you feed
And some will burn the boundaries
Between dalliance and need

Those blackened veins betray you
Now your skin will crack and split
And you heart is beating faster
Than the beggar at your lips

(Chorus)

And when you’re dead and swollen
From the venom in his bite
I will cradle you, and bathe you
And shake your body dry

My friend I still regret
That I loved you till you died
But I buried you in flowers
And boiled you to the sky

(Chorus 2x)

As soon as I can make a decent video, I’ll probably post a solo version of this. It’s acoustic only right now, but that might change.

thinking of thinking

thinking about thinking for the first time in weeks…

thinking you are either
1) utterly clueless or
2) calculating and infuriating and sexy, goddamn you

also, thinking that this new phase I’m in
the one where i say things to people when I think them
has its perks but also
has its share of flaws
for example:
i am well trusted but no,
i don’t think I wanted to hear that,
and secretly (well maybe not anymore)
i took that thing you said in confidence
as a thrilling personal challenge-
I
(freshly armed with knowledge of the distinct taste
of your lips and skin and oh)
-know-
that i could do oh so much better’
darling,
sweartogod
and i wouldn’t trade you off tomorrow

but anyways, mostly i’m thinking and thinking
and thinking about thinking
and goddamn it you’re
pretty.

Temporary Hiatus

To those of you who regularly read my blog, I’ll be rejoining my almost daily schedule in two or three weeks. Currently I’m working more hours than I’m not, and that’s not exaggeration. I’m finding that fourteen-plus hour days aren’t conducive to a regular writing schedule. Imagine that.

So thanks for the reads you’ve given me so far, I will be back.

source of yr discomfort

your nervous laugh when he walks by is registered and filed haphazardly as another lover lost walks past he thinks and thinks and thinks he thinks that the nurse thought he was mental and by rights he was but swear to god it’s all he can do to get by.
and later you saw him at the bar with the left hand all a-shaking and again the nervous laugh that gets to be the nervous cough and now
you’re wondering if you know knew the guy maybe maybe not but if you did you’re still just nervous laughing and nervous coughing and looking too much at the source of your discomfort and you won’t think till you get home drunk and numbed that maybe just maybe maybe he looked like you will and then you’ll nervous laugh yourself to sleep

Upon Examination

upon examination of
the word inhibition
i have decided it’s
the enemy,