Rumblings of probably not-reckonings heeded, the darkness that comes so early, the quiet street where nobody seems to live, haunted by ghosts of gentrifiers past, of immigrants and regular folks, boarded up buildings.
But I drive through the rain to make art, and my fingernails have taken a beating from scrubbing with all that acetone and pumice and I show the new student the treasure trove of colored powders and jars of jewel-toned glass like raw-hewn gems. The time goes by so quickly and I'm trying to decide between hues of ruby, amethyst, aquamarine, amber. There will be time for all of these and more.
And tonight, music. I am past the feelings of insecurity, of not being cool enough, of not being good enough, even though I'm not as technically proficient as I once was, which tends to happen when one's tastes shift from reading the John Petrucci columns in Guitar World to listening to the squalling guitars of Repeater for the first time. I know more what I'd want to do.
What I wonder is if this is what I want to do.
It's said there's only two types of music: good and bad, and to some extent this is true. But anyone who has any shred of geeky love for tuneage knows that the strands of genre can be split indefinitely. What kind of 'rock' does your band play? Does it jangle, does it plod, does it shred, does it shimmer? Do you want to save the world or smash it or just get laid? Does it matter? Are you pop-punk or old-school punk or crusty punk? Is your metal classic/thrash/black/death/core/whatever?
Does it matter? Do we get along? We don't have to see things the same way, but are we wired to mesh so well that the creative sparks fly? There's been so many times where it hasn't despite our best efforts. When I didn't know what to play, when Ithought your lyrics sucked, when you all wanted to play Bikini Kill, when you were all friends and I was the interloper, when you said I was ok for a girl. , when me and the drummer decided we didn't want to play with them anymore and quit, when you were a drama queen and maybe I was too and we didn't get along as friends let alone as bandmates, those times I waited for practice to end so we could wander in the woods and be existential beneath the stars and trees.
And now my vision is focused, and I still dream of weekend warrioring, of getting off work to make noise like I did so long ago and dreamed. I miss it so much in these times when the art and the writing just don't coalesce. And maybe by now I'm just getting too old.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
unbalanced pieces
Awakening on a couch more comfortable than my bed to the cats running, it's cold outside, and maybe it's the artificial sweetener accidentally ingested making my head feel foggy, wondering how the brain processes all these things, the physical, the mental, the spiritual because sometimes the little clarity I have is blurred and I mumble and grumble incoherently to God as I sit up and realize the sun's already risen but it's not all that late.
I tried to play guitar last night, between the ringing of the phone, couldn't find it in me to be social to do anything functional as the Paper From Hell's day of reckoning gets closer, someone knocked on the door and scared me last night but it was just the kid across the street. I felt bad, but I didn't want to open the door either.
But the sun is out, and I will go in pursuit of coffee and relating and being, wondering how I let a little Lanegan/Patton jam pass me by the first time around.
I tried to play guitar last night, between the ringing of the phone, couldn't find it in me to be social to do anything functional as the Paper From Hell's day of reckoning gets closer, someone knocked on the door and scared me last night but it was just the kid across the street. I felt bad, but I didn't want to open the door either.
But the sun is out, and I will go in pursuit of coffee and relating and being, wondering how I let a little Lanegan/Patton jam pass me by the first time around.
Friday, November 11, 2011
dead cells
I could write...
...about those who defend the indefensible. Of cults of sports and personality, of men in power who do horrible things and those who enable it.
...about the awkward moments of feeling fake when dealing with fake people, of self preservation and the fragile dynamics of small talk.
...about hearing so many people talk about the military and how much good it does for kids and shudder inwardly, knowing that if I say anything I'll sound crazy.
...about how I haven't been writing my paper.
...about how I haven't been writing anything else.
...about how I haven't written someone a letter because I'm too shy to.
...about the pending weekend.
I just don't know what to say. Did I ever?
...about those who defend the indefensible. Of cults of sports and personality, of men in power who do horrible things and those who enable it.
...about the awkward moments of feeling fake when dealing with fake people, of self preservation and the fragile dynamics of small talk.
...about hearing so many people talk about the military and how much good it does for kids and shudder inwardly, knowing that if I say anything I'll sound crazy.
...about how I haven't been writing my paper.
...about how I haven't been writing anything else.
...about how I haven't written someone a letter because I'm too shy to.
...about the pending weekend.
I just don't know what to say. Did I ever?
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
my dear lady disdain
There's a certain small meanness of being low on the totem pole and part of the out crowd, of being in a position of vulnerability, of being more or less powerless and frustrated and maybe more bitter than one would like to admit.
And I saw the janusian two-faced-ness of yet another, who exists in a world of networking and schmoozing of pleasant shallowness only to backbite out of earshot as I attempt to defend the quirkiness of my fellow peons as the bile in my gut churns with the acid of the coffee and I need to be polite to this person because it keeps the world spinning, even if I mean it as little as they do.
I feel like that kid in O'Connor's short story 'Temple of the Holy Ghost' making fun of the priest at her church and the stupid neighbor boys and the ditzy schoolgirls and coming to the realization that for whatever freakiness and ugly we have in us there is something beautiful and of God in each of us too, even though in all honesty it's damn near impossible to see sometimes if I speak truthfully.
So I think about him, and how I do the same thing, with different people, every day and while I could justify it, how different is it, even if they kind of give me the creeps or they say stupid and ignorant things, and who am I to denigrate, hypocritical in frowning upon it in others, having been on the receiving end all too often, and so many of the things I've said and thought that were just wrong, wrong, wrong, and how is that made right, because apologizing to someone by saying "I wasn't very nice to you and you wouldn't have ever known if I never said anything" just creates more drama, and I guess the next best thing is going and sinning no more I guess? Is that even possible? Or like all other unrealistic ideals made undoable in perfection due to our inherent suckness, something to aspire to?
And I saw the janusian two-faced-ness of yet another, who exists in a world of networking and schmoozing of pleasant shallowness only to backbite out of earshot as I attempt to defend the quirkiness of my fellow peons as the bile in my gut churns with the acid of the coffee and I need to be polite to this person because it keeps the world spinning, even if I mean it as little as they do.
I feel like that kid in O'Connor's short story 'Temple of the Holy Ghost' making fun of the priest at her church and the stupid neighbor boys and the ditzy schoolgirls and coming to the realization that for whatever freakiness and ugly we have in us there is something beautiful and of God in each of us too, even though in all honesty it's damn near impossible to see sometimes if I speak truthfully.
So I think about him, and how I do the same thing, with different people, every day and while I could justify it, how different is it, even if they kind of give me the creeps or they say stupid and ignorant things, and who am I to denigrate, hypocritical in frowning upon it in others, having been on the receiving end all too often, and so many of the things I've said and thought that were just wrong, wrong, wrong, and how is that made right, because apologizing to someone by saying "I wasn't very nice to you and you wouldn't have ever known if I never said anything" just creates more drama, and I guess the next best thing is going and sinning no more I guess? Is that even possible? Or like all other unrealistic ideals made undoable in perfection due to our inherent suckness, something to aspire to?
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
best of the blotter: Don't Fear The Reaper
A Drake Road resident called police Halloween night when her 11-year-old son came home from trick-or-treating with a can of beer.
The boy pointed out the house where he received the beer.
Police spoke with a resident, who said when she arrived home, there were 10 or 15 kids at her house without permission. They took off running when she arrived.
She said she was not sure which of the teens offered beer to a trick-or-treater, but said she would speak to her sons about it.
The 11-year-old's mother said she did not want to pursue criminal charges. Police disposed of the beer.
OVI, LAKE ROAD: Police stopped a car on Lake Road near Columbia Road Oct. 30 at 12:44 a.m. for a traffic violation. The 33-year-old woman driver, who was dressed like Goldilocks, admitted she had been drinking at a costume party. After taking a field sobriety test, the driver was arrested for operating a vehicle while impaired. She will face charge in Rocky River Municipal Court.
An Avon teen may have gotten a bit too realistic with his Halloween costume.
Someone in the North Doovys called Avon Police around 6:17 p.m. Monday, during trick-or-treating time in town, that a boy about 14 years old, wearing a dark sweatshirt and jeans, was walking along the road carrying a real scythe.
Police talked with the boy, who took the scythe home.
The boy pointed out the house where he received the beer.
Police spoke with a resident, who said when she arrived home, there were 10 or 15 kids at her house without permission. They took off running when she arrived.
She said she was not sure which of the teens offered beer to a trick-or-treater, but said she would speak to her sons about it.
The 11-year-old's mother said she did not want to pursue criminal charges. Police disposed of the beer.
OVI, LAKE ROAD: Police stopped a car on Lake Road near Columbia Road Oct. 30 at 12:44 a.m. for a traffic violation. The 33-year-old woman driver, who was dressed like Goldilocks, admitted she had been drinking at a costume party. After taking a field sobriety test, the driver was arrested for operating a vehicle while impaired. She will face charge in Rocky River Municipal Court.
An Avon teen may have gotten a bit too realistic with his Halloween costume.
Someone in the North Doovys called Avon Police around 6:17 p.m. Monday, during trick-or-treating time in town, that a boy about 14 years old, wearing a dark sweatshirt and jeans, was walking along the road carrying a real scythe.
Police talked with the boy, who took the scythe home.
weekend warriors
I didn't make any money for the station during our annual fundraising thing, due to being on so early and everyone in Cleveland who still listens to terrestrial radio being poor.
Well, you're on really early and it's when a lot of blue collar people go to work," says a professorial looking friend of the DJ after me. "Blue collar people usually don't listen to college radio anyway."
OH REALLY.
It's not like I haven't run across this attitude in other places, and it seems prevalent among the multiply college degreed that make up the fields of academia and technocracy. The people who listen to Springsteen and Billy Bragg and talk about solidarity "working people" when it's a convenient talking point involving unions that they're not even in, yet condescend and disparage those whose hands are cracked and dirty at the end of a ten-hour day as ignorant of the finer things in life because they don't sit around all day reading blogs at work. "Well they probably listen to Nickelback and drink beer and watch football and don't read books."
Well how the hell do you know? And so what if other people do? No one's making you conform to that. And I wonder if they have any friends outside of their profession or income demographic or political affiliation, honestly, because when things are painted with this broad of a generalized brush of cultural snobbery, my Inner Parmastani kid gets mad because it's so condescending and at least in my experience (which admittedly might be both biased and also lucky), not totally true.
And it's funny, because a good amount of my callers are warehouse workers and third shifters who want to hear King Sunny Ade or really liked that Siouxsie and the Banshees song or would have loved to have a pair of those tickets to see that band but they work second shift and can't go. I think of people like my dad and his friends, my friends who are also peons who can talk as smart as any PhD scholar who just never had the opportunities or ambition or the convenient accidents of birth.
There is so much more nuance than credit is given, so many brilliant minds without the letters after their names who don't even give themselves credit for their brilliance because they like what they like and have nothing to prove. The poets whose brilliance will blush unseen in desk drawers or shared by a handful of others, the musicians whose gifts never leave the living room, the artists whose canvases are stacked in a corner and given away to friends, the infinite basement rockers with day jobs and sometimes kids who get their catharsis out on the weekends and after dinner.
But I hold my peace, because I haven't had my morning coffee, I don't know this person and will probably never see them again, and there are some battles just not worth fighting. This is our noise too.
Well, you're on really early and it's when a lot of blue collar people go to work," says a professorial looking friend of the DJ after me. "Blue collar people usually don't listen to college radio anyway."
OH REALLY.
It's not like I haven't run across this attitude in other places, and it seems prevalent among the multiply college degreed that make up the fields of academia and technocracy. The people who listen to Springsteen and Billy Bragg and talk about solidarity "working people" when it's a convenient talking point involving unions that they're not even in, yet condescend and disparage those whose hands are cracked and dirty at the end of a ten-hour day as ignorant of the finer things in life because they don't sit around all day reading blogs at work. "Well they probably listen to Nickelback and drink beer and watch football and don't read books."
Well how the hell do you know? And so what if other people do? No one's making you conform to that. And I wonder if they have any friends outside of their profession or income demographic or political affiliation, honestly, because when things are painted with this broad of a generalized brush of cultural snobbery, my Inner Parmastani kid gets mad because it's so condescending and at least in my experience (which admittedly might be both biased and also lucky), not totally true.
And it's funny, because a good amount of my callers are warehouse workers and third shifters who want to hear King Sunny Ade or really liked that Siouxsie and the Banshees song or would have loved to have a pair of those tickets to see that band but they work second shift and can't go. I think of people like my dad and his friends, my friends who are also peons who can talk as smart as any PhD scholar who just never had the opportunities or ambition or the convenient accidents of birth.
There is so much more nuance than credit is given, so many brilliant minds without the letters after their names who don't even give themselves credit for their brilliance because they like what they like and have nothing to prove. The poets whose brilliance will blush unseen in desk drawers or shared by a handful of others, the musicians whose gifts never leave the living room, the artists whose canvases are stacked in a corner and given away to friends, the infinite basement rockers with day jobs and sometimes kids who get their catharsis out on the weekends and after dinner.
But I hold my peace, because I haven't had my morning coffee, I don't know this person and will probably never see them again, and there are some battles just not worth fighting. This is our noise too.
Monday, November 7, 2011
progress progress pleasant myth
One of the great perks of academic peonage is the ability to take free classes and keep the brain from atrophying, though what good it does for my cortices might be cancelled out by the blood pressure, released only by doing my best to not laugh or start talking too much.
I love that we have these discussions and I'm sure people wonder what planet I'm from too with some of the things I think and say but sometimes these perspectives are either so bizarre I can't even parse them out or they're so caricatureistic that I just kind of shake my head and wait until the end of class to vent with Randal about the Ayn Rand acolyte, the Che-obsessed undergrad who can't believe that Stalin would ever do anything bad, the older gentleman who still believes in some archaic concept of law and order and neoconnery, the other who believes that the world is getting better and someday we'll all hold hands and kumbayah and brings EVERYTHING back to the KKK.
As a country, yes, we're not as institutionally racist and that's a really good thing, but is it any better in the rest of the world? Sub-Saharan Africans in post-Gaddafi Libya are getting massacred, the Bhutanese who say they're the happiest country in the world are uprooting their Nepali kindred, the Bantu Somali were enslaved by the ethnic Somali up through the 1930s and still endure discrimination there, and when they immigrate elsewhere.
You really think it's better? Same shit, different place no matter what book you read or statistics you throw my way. How do you live this long and travel the world and be so educated and yet be so constrained by the narrowness of your personal experience? I just don't understand.
And I speak up and say we've all got dirty hands here, that all this talk of rights and universalities is semantics, and that no one treats everyone justly.
Classroom lessons World War Two
Atrocities against the Jews
Never again our solemn vow
That's why we all share Cambodia
Isn't it great how far we've come since then?
And I can't help but bow my head and cry
It took so long to finally realize
That all our hopes are based on such gross lies
Dialectic's shit
Evolution's crap
Time and time again the masquerade is
Shown for what it really is:
Progress, progress it's a pleasant myth
Progress, progress it's a pleasant myth
Progress, progress
Pleasant myth
That makes my life worthwhile
I love that we have these discussions and I'm sure people wonder what planet I'm from too with some of the things I think and say but sometimes these perspectives are either so bizarre I can't even parse them out or they're so caricatureistic that I just kind of shake my head and wait until the end of class to vent with Randal about the Ayn Rand acolyte, the Che-obsessed undergrad who can't believe that Stalin would ever do anything bad, the older gentleman who still believes in some archaic concept of law and order and neoconnery, the other who believes that the world is getting better and someday we'll all hold hands and kumbayah and brings EVERYTHING back to the KKK.
As a country, yes, we're not as institutionally racist and that's a really good thing, but is it any better in the rest of the world? Sub-Saharan Africans in post-Gaddafi Libya are getting massacred, the Bhutanese who say they're the happiest country in the world are uprooting their Nepali kindred, the Bantu Somali were enslaved by the ethnic Somali up through the 1930s and still endure discrimination there, and when they immigrate elsewhere.
You really think it's better? Same shit, different place no matter what book you read or statistics you throw my way. How do you live this long and travel the world and be so educated and yet be so constrained by the narrowness of your personal experience? I just don't understand.
And I speak up and say we've all got dirty hands here, that all this talk of rights and universalities is semantics, and that no one treats everyone justly.
Classroom lessons World War Two
Atrocities against the Jews
Never again our solemn vow
That's why we all share Cambodia
Isn't it great how far we've come since then?
And I can't help but bow my head and cry
It took so long to finally realize
That all our hopes are based on such gross lies
Dialectic's shit
Evolution's crap
Time and time again the masquerade is
Shown for what it really is:
Progress, progress it's a pleasant myth
Progress, progress it's a pleasant myth
Progress, progress
Pleasant myth
That makes my life worthwhile
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