www.mooselamp.net

Thursday, April 21, 2005

I signed a petition for Ted Kennedy

I like Ted because he was the Kennedy that couldn't party and get laid as successfully as his brothers and he didn't have the balls they did. And as a result, we still have him here to be a fair and sensible voice in politics. I don't know that anyone is taking him seriously, but whatever. I think he's cute.

The e-mail said "William Myers and the Republican leaders who are trying to seize absolute power by changing the rules of the Senate in order to silence their opposition. Join me in opposing their bausive tactics:

www.tedkennedy.com/NoMyers

I signed my petiton and had nothing to add in the comment portion, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity, right? So I wrote:

"I am a citizen whose only option to speak to powers that be much less inact change in the system is by e-mail. And we know how useless e-mail is. HEll, I don't even know the motivations of the people I'm aligning with here, I just know that in this day any concern for voicelessness is a concern of mine. If anyone reads these comments and has any consciousness about matters that leads you to think we are headed for a horrible horrible rift, consider what you can do to make things better -in your personal life, at work, where ever. Do it now."

I only preach to politicians, and may I say there was a bit of role playing. (I would never say "hell".) Because e-mail is not the only way to make change. It's just what I think the majority of the disenfranchised country is doing: watching the Daily Show, petitioning with Move On. For a country who likes results, this is a start, but I for one am already tired of it and am leery that it will take steam away from people who need to be using their mind power to enact and envision the next step of real change. Somedays I think Move On is a government plot. An opiate for the people.

But I still sign.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Segismundo's response

I may be just dreaming,
even though I think I'm awake?
I'm not dreaming because I feel and believe
that which I was and that which I am.

And, even though you regret it now,
there's not much you can do about it:
I know who I am and even if you sigh
and grieve, you won't be able

to undo the fact that I was born
heir to this crown;
and if you saw me formerly
a prisoner of my shackles,
it was because I didn't know who I was;
but now I have been informed
as to who I am, and I know that I'm
a hybrid of man and beast.

(Segismundo (prince) to Basilio (king)*)

*of Poland

Mad Mission

NYU campus is intoxicating. Today students completing three years of graduate studies begin their thesis presentations. The air in the halls is an electricity I have not yet experienced. (Possibly due to the gathering of a significant number of faculty who are here at the same time to be shown the mind of the students. Role reversal!)

Stacey's thesis is "Life Is A Dream" by Pedro Calderon de la Barca. I open now to a random page (somewhere in act two):

"You're an insolent barbarian: heaven has kept its word;
and so, it is to heaven that I appeal,
you prideful, conceited man!

"And even though you now know who you are,
and the delusion has been lifted from you,
and you find yourself in a place
where you take precedence over all others,
pay close heed to my admonition
to be humble and tractable,
because you may just be dreaming,
even though you think you are awake!"

I spend lunch in Washington Square Park meditating and writing on my life as a prayer, consumed by forces bringing my own new life to me. All around me the women and the men are beautiful, bright colors all, coarsing with energies of new life. Seated in a place to witness and not merely observe, I consider how my awakening has come with such force that it is hard at the moment for me to contextualize humility... I love each of these people and cannot be here without my connection to them, and yet, if I do not focus on myself right now, all is lost to me. They are fragrances floating by.

Am I the soul of the character being spoken to, or am I a new form, teeming with wisdom from such classic works, experience and the whisperings of my blood? In any event, I suspect I remain humble and tractable, and certainly more aware that I may be dreaming an idea of me.

The fact is, I suggest to myself, such great realignment after 34 years won't be handed lightly. And pwimp tho' I may be, I like a good body slam. I am comfortable being run dizzy through the rinse cycle. For now contemplating my own equilibrium is all I can do. I will faith that this doesn't compromise humility. In fact, as I think of it, I have lately been acting upon a much greater capacity for compassion and attention to the lives of those close to me.

I ponder my new health and realize a strange dysfunction with the idea of walking in the ways of the Buddah, the Christ - such actions are as radical and taboo as anything one can contemplate now. I am simply daring myself to do it.

MAd Mission. I got the ambition. Sign me up.

Back to work, I stopped at the cafe in the commons room for water. Three girls were in front of me, giddy and colorful, making everything they observed between them an event. It was a cute and short enough exposure to not be tiring. Then I saw them waiting for the up elevator.

I got on and asked if they would press three. One of them did so, and then another of the girls - the who had been most interested in my reactions to them in line at the cafe said to me, "Third Floor..is that design?"

"Yes," I said.

"What do you design," she asked.

"I sit at my desk and work on a computer and watch the designers walk up and down the hall," I said.

"Fun," she said.

"Yup."

By the end of our exchange I was off the elevator and almost to my desk. As the door closed I could see that she was still interested in what I was up to. Did she suspect? In that slippery second, I rewound to Her question of me.

"What do you design," she says again.

"My life," I reply.

http://chezray.blogspot.com

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

The Cosmic Mass

From a web site linked to Creation Spirituality...

The "The Cosmic Mass" (TCM) is a conscious effort to reinvigorate Western ritual by deconstructing the forms of worship we have inherited from the modern era.(such as sitting in benches and being read to, preached at or reading from books including song books). We reconstruct these forms of worship by going back to the pre-modern practice of dance. Dance gets us into our first chakras again; dance takes us out of our heads and down again and connecting to the earth again. Joy results. Dance demands breathing and so it fulfills ancient teachings that connect breath with spirit. This connection is found not only in the Biblical story of the Creator breathing the divine breath into the clay to make it a living human but also in the ancient languages of Africa where the word for "dance" is the same as the word for "breath" which is also the word for "spirit." ("Breath" and "Spirit" are the same word (ruah) in Hebrew as well.) The African spiritual teacher, Malidome Some, tells us there is no community without ritual. Thus renewing ritual lies at the heart of bringing community back to our consciousness and experience. The modern era with its emphasis on ruggedly individual atoms, practically destroyed a sense of community. Renewed ritual can and does bring it back. And today's science with its emphasis on interconnectivity lays a groundwork for the return of community. But it needs ritual to make it happen. At our Techno Cosmic Masses people dance to techno music as well as live music; DJ's provide the musical ambience and VJ's or video jockeys provide images through slides and videos that tell the story of the theme celebrated. The theme might be "Gaia our Mother" or "The Return of the Sacred Masculine" or "The Return of the Divine Feminine" or "Kinship with Animals" or any number of themes that unite us spiritually today. In the "Return of the Divine Feminine" Mass we collected 500 slides of the Goddess from all the world's traditions (including the Black Madonna and Mary from the West). And we danced in the presence of these images, bringing in the spirit of the Divine Feminine. At each Mass we have a "via negativa" or grief experience where we grieve and lament together the loss or pain we are feeling in our hearts from abuse about the theme of the occasion. Grieving is such an essential aspect to getting over anger and into our creativity. We also have communion or sharing of the sacred bread and wine that unites all beings in the sacred act of eating and drinking divine food and drink. Early in the Mass is a fifteen minute "via positiva" dance or dance of Joy and Delight and Celebration. At the closing of the service is a fifteen minute "via transformativa" dance or warrior dance which prepares us to go into the world and back to our communities as healerss and strong defenders of compassion. A variety of ages is always represented as well as many kinds of artists and people from diverse religious backgrounds ranging from Christian to Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Pagan. The worship is so pre-modern in many respects that many find a home there. Beauty is everywhere present. And, one might say, magic.

Friday, April 15, 2005

It starts with a simple question

(THE FIRST E-MAIL FROM ADAM)

ADAM: Can you beleive this?

(FOLLOWED BY A LINK TO A NEWS PAGE)

News in brief from eastern Pennsylvania

4/15/2005, 8:46 a.m. ET
The Associated Press
 
SHICKSHINNY, Pa. (AP) — A familiar presence is missing from a Luzerne County bed-and-breakfast, leaving the owner and his neighbors to searched the woods for a $400 department store mannequin nicknamed Belle that has decorated the porch for years.

The figure was always dressed for the season and attracted waves from people passing by the Blue Heron Bed and Breakfast on Bethel Hill Road, owner Jesse Turner said.

Belle was wearing a summer dress, hat, scarf and white gloves when she disappeared from the porch late Sunday or early Monday, Turner said.

So far Turner has found only the arms and some of the mannequin's clothing. "It amazes me that someone would do something like that," he said. "It's unbelievable. It's just some malicious thing."

TOWANDA, Pa. (AP) — A woman accused of stealing more than $500,000 from the Canton Borough Water and Sewer Authority pleaded innocent to charges of forgery, theft by unlawful taking and tampering with public records or information....(snip)

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — The city signed an agreement to lease Earl F. Hunsicker Bicentennial Park to a Gilbertsville company that organizes youth baseball tournaments for $72,000 for three years...(snip)

READING, Pa. (AP) — The Muhlenberg School Board voted unanimously to remove the novel "The Buffalo Tree," by Adam Rapp, from its curriculum, citing explicit sexual references and vulgar language.

The book had been part of the approved 11th-grade curriculum since 2000, but a few parents told the board that its graphic sexual content was inappropriate for high school students.

Muhlenberg junior Brittany L. Hunsicker, who had complained to the board, read excerpts at Wednesday's public meeting, but board members stopped her after a few paragraphs.

"If this type of book is in our school, then why not have Hustler and Penthouse in the school library?" board member Otto W. Voit III said.

Dr. Joseph S. Yarworth, Muhlenberg superintendent, said copies of the novel were removed from school library and classroom shelves Thursday morning.

The author, reached by telephone, said he was shocked that the novel, describing the life of a young man serving a sentence in a juvenile detention center, was banned. "This is a story about friendship, about survival and about kids trying to make it in the world," Rapp said.

Though it deals with difficult subjects, students can often hear about the same matters on television or the Internet, he said. "I am stunned to think it would be banned in 2005 at a school district in America."

(END E-MAIL)

RESPONSE TO ADAM:

You know, last night Traci and I were toasting you after we got word
of this, but this is horrific.

You were four stories down in a column that led with story about a
molested department store mannequin.

ADAM'S NEXT RESPONSE:

I just received this from a teacher from the school where this went down...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Glen Martin
To: Adam Rapp
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 05:32:29 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: The Buffalo Tree - book banning

Mr. Rapp,

My name is Glen Martin, and I am an English teacher at Governor Mifflin
Senior High School near Reading, PA.  We are a neighboring district of
Muhlenberg, whose board voted Wednesday night to ban your book The Buffalo
Tree from its curriculum.

Though I have not read your book (and, admittedly, was not familiar with it
until this furor arose), I am troubled by the events in this case.  The
school board of Muhlenberg School District listened to a couple of passages
out of context--the favored m.o. of evangelicals who challenge books--and
immediately voted to ban the book.  Though it had been approved several
years ago for inclusion in the 11th grade curriculum--and despite the fact
that a process exists whereby parents can challenge books--the board
professed to be outraged by its content and took this unfortunate action.
Many 11th grade classes were in the middle of reading this book; after the
board's decision, the books were taken from the students and placed in a
vault (I'm not kidding!) to protect the students from the books' purportedly
corrupting elements.

Our department had a similar situation several years ago.  Several
conservative Christian parents challenged Maya Angelou's I Know Why the
Caged Bird Sings for a variety of reasons, but mostly because of the scene
in which Maya is sexually assaulted at a young age.  They, too, read
passages from the book out of context and tried to play into the board
members' fears and sense of overprotectiveness.  But ultimately, and
fortunately, our board followed our procedure for challenging a book, the
English department had a chance to defend the work, and the book was allowed
to remain in the curriculum.

I'm writing for two reasons.  First, I want to reassure you that there are
passionate anti-censorship advocates at both Muhlenberg and Governor Mifflin
High Schools who are struggling to ensure that students are exposed to ideas
that may be uncomfortable, but are ultimately essential to developing
critical thinking skills and a broad worldview.  Second, I want to ask your
advice: Have you heard of your book being challenged or banned in the past?
What strategies can you recommend to combat this phenomenon--in which a
small, but determined and vocal, group of evangelicals challenges the
slightest "inappropriate" content in a book?  How can we continue to
introduce compelling literature dealing with the sometimes discomfiting
themes of sexuality, drug abuse, incarceration, etc., into our curricula?

Thank you for your time.

Glen Martin
Department of English
Governor Mifflin Senior High School


THE LAST WORD BELONGS TO JESSE TURNER:

"It's unbelievable. It's just some malicious thing."


 

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Computer Lab

The picture on the monitor across the room from me is of two polar bears in the front yard of a snowed-on lower-income suburb. One bear sprawls on his back against a snowdrift, his legs wide out in front of him and belly high, staring off at something that I can imagine is a ball game. The other bear has a more traditional polar-like stance, also looking on with mild interest. The house behind them is one of a row of post WWII ranch homes, and they are blocking a driveway where sits an early 60s red and white trim corvette-like vehicle.

The copier next to me has been making 23 copies of 8 pages for a while now, the rhythm lulling me into dream states. Traci hits the alarm and returns to the room wet from a shower. The mannequins in the hallway of Tisch School are dressed for Shakespeare. Music that will never be heard by anyone else builds vast archetecture in front of my eyes. Hair creme, cigatettes, autistic aliens. Roast pork and wontons. A curbside on 9th has a crack like Guatemala. Orange.

I rock back and forth to the pulse of the xerox. When I drift further to sleep my head does a free fall and I wake with a jerk with the gentlest awareness of where I am, returning to the bear lounging in the snow.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Reading on the job...

I have been working for nearly a month now at NYU. I am the administrative assistant at the Tisch School of Design for Stage and Film. I am a secretary. A receptionist. Both of these roles have taken an excruciatingly long time to adjust to, but now that I am more confident in my duties, I am a sponge.

Recently the students here were honored by a lecture by Jean-Guy Lecat, co author of "The Open Circle" which is a book that chronicles the theater environments of director Peter Brook who has a production going on in Harlem this month.

Some excerpts (quotes from Brook):

"People have said repeatedly that my recent work is 'simple', and this has become a very friendly cliche. The warning I would always attach to such statements is that the road to simplicity is extremely long, and I discourage anybody else from trying to start with the notion of simplicity, because it is something that arises as a result of diverse, sometimes convoluted processes.

"An ethical idea of simplicity as a point of departure can be revealing if it involves discarding everything moot, whether it is a protection or a defensive reflex, and seeing what happens."

" We've never worked to a budget. Micheline used to say, 'Do what you want and we'll find a solution', and we would feel our way, try something, and if it was too expensive cut down on something else and sometimes get into debt...Sometimes newcomers from the outside can't understand our approach: they want to know what their individual budjet is, how they can operate, but the process for us is sort of a jostle, negotiating things as we go along, arguing our priorities, rather like breaking a horse."

The School of Design

Design students who desire to stitch fantastic clothing and arrange physical space with furniture and light for theater works come to the Tisch School at NYU where they draw and paint their fucking asses off. This is because at every step in reaching their great statements in costume and set design, they have to visualize the end result and more importantly, communicate that vision in a way that everyone involved in the collaboration can understand. I am always awed and astounded by the ways ideas are concieved and developed, and witnessing the energy of it happening here is kicking my ass.

This is one large lesson for me as a music maker because collaboration with a band can suffer from not drawing pictures clear enough to demonstrate what can be. Often what is referred to as "vibe" is the result of having left much to chance and hoping for the magic to just "happen", which is one reason why many records feel half-baked. It takes great skill and the work of a focused group to make doors big enough for God to walk through, which is the kind of collaboration great producers and directors are capable of. The skill rquired, as near as I have found, start with great meditation and preparation, and not a kind always made obvious if its done well. By time a recording has started, all the preparation should be distilled into a gesture as simple as plugging in and rolling.

Of course, in the realization of the art, the results always become something of an odd potato toss, with the best parts never planned, and some disapointments arising from what was expected to be the high points. Always at some stage you find yourself outside the vehicle using a tire iron for a broomstick. At these moments, the objective needs to remain clear and communicable: where are you headed? Visualization is a living thing. Even as it remains connected to the original intent, it has to change as the work comes to life. And as they say in the army: no plan survives first contact. Everyone has to stay connected. I have discovered this to be one of my greatest challenges - how to ride the incoming waves and also communicate direction and changes to let everyone know what is now, at this point in the journey, possible to achieve. Sometimes I want to say, "okay, so this is really what we've been doing all this time" but that would sound like I was masterminding it. As Peter Brook says, the experience of finduing your way to the end is something more akin to breaking a horse.

One thing is for sure, though: when communication stops you are dead in the water, and the worst experience is to feel like you are the only one pulling. Moments like this can inspire great epiphanies of hindsight, realizing that you may have been focusing on things that left you unprepared for the place you now find yourself. Regroup. Move forward.

Demonstrate. Design. More now than ever I seek to learn the tools and languages to make the art of music making happen more fully. Pro-tools and effects and microphones and mic techniques are part of the bag of instruments that I have learned little about up to now, and I at least need to know what I don't know. Records and friends and books and experience are the resource. Nothing can be assumed, I tell myself, at all times speak simple and directly to the matter. Avoid the urge to make grand sweeping statements. Above all, give great attention to the inner voices of everyone as they are communing at all times with the emerging life being created.

Yeah, sure, right? Or so I think anyway. But I finish this post dissapointed at my focus. To begin with, there are far greater collaborations than bands. Wives, family, and friends all deserve at least the same attention. I suspect if I ever absorb the wisdom of these lessons, I will not be so consumed by a need to declare my findings or distinguish the media and discipline entailed. But for now, like the great souls awake in these halls, I am weighted by the sense of all I haven't learned yet. Like them, I yell for an echo. Like them, I advance with ambition and the few tools I have, in every way a student.

And like them I get back to work.

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Hassel between the gutter and the tassles

Tonight Traci and I walked from West 3rd and MacDougal south into Soho, across Little Italy and Chinatown, returning home through the Lower East Side. Spring in New York...being in a new place..... the blood pumps. We have come to New York to be lucky (luckier?) We've come to do something. To begin. It amazes me to think of how much we have been willing to risk so that we may go for a kind of life that pleases and finally get some shit straight. It amazes me that we are willing to be lucky. Stuff is happening, but slowly. We've managed to pay our bills for the second month in a row, but we have about a week of food money right now. I feel anxiety all the time and wait for the ball to drop, but we are eating well, have a drink everyday, and thanks to the kindness of friends have books and some weed to last a while. I am worried, but I don't stay paralyzed in this state. I keep moving, dotting "i"s and crossing "t" s. It is my only saving grace. Being scared for your life is a special kind of motivator.

This town is everything people say - a constant struggle just to stay here. But it's also everything else they say - a place like no other which will, in your darkest moment, give a little nudge to keep you moving. Case in point:

Yesterday Traci and I walked into 10-64 CoffeeShop in Long Island City. When I ordered my drink the Barista said I looked familiar. I said it was probably my Mossy Oak cap. (Mike, you left it in the upstairs bathroom at Dad's - now it's mine.) But then she asked if I was "Rizzo". By time we left, I had a free latte, and had been asked to play drums in the barista's burlesque show that she is putting together. The barista offered Traci free drinks and bagels and pasteries too, but she had just eaten.

Traci called it Serendipity, referencing the pulp books she'd bought me for my birthday and how I had always said I wanted to play a burlesque show. I was all the more pleased that she was pleased and we both agreed it didn't matter if it ever happened - it was just some good Ju Ju to keep us pushing through.

Friday, March 25, 2005

Happy Good Friday

In New York City whole businesses are shut down and all the Christian schools are on holiday.

The people at the Design Department for Stage and Film at NYU are surprised to learn that New York observes Good Friday as a holiday more than the midwest, but I tell them that no secular business in Louisville that I know of would close in observance of the day.

I am surprised that a theater school isn't closed in observance. Theater of the Western World has its origin with dramatic enactments of rolling the rock from the tomb and finding Jesus gone.

I think the Passion story is at the center of all great stories.

Good Friday is my favorite holiday next to Thanksgiving. It's as close to Yom Kippur as I ever got from the Catholics, and I motivated myself to atonement by wrapping my Friday The 13th horror skillz around the idea of the final moments of Jesus' mission. I get the good eye from this and every year examining the details yeilds different results. I've only once experienced a Good Friday without rain and I've been paying attention since I was in the single digits.

On the flipside, I think Easter is a powerful moment to be a part of, but theologically speaking it is one of the biggest confoundments the christian man ever gave himself. It's like the great novel put in the hands of a Hollywood producer. The people want a happy ending. Don't leave them on a downnote and for god's sake, don't give them anything to reflect upon! They've got to work in the morning! (Some of them already took Friday off for Chrissake!) Everytime I see an Easter Pageant I think of man's great capacity to be obsessively attentive in meditating on the human predicament and so ready to honor it by injesting helium from bright balloons and show one's tits. Don't get me wrong - I love it. I celebrate this truth every Easter with a community of people who don't think they are insane acting like complete lunatics. We break bread. No one is sure why. It is real.

Pulling Jesus from the cave = rabbit from the hat. Shake in your seat and clap and say YAY because it IS magic.

Happy Easter.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

The Open Circle

Ever since I played drums on a Lite Brite box and imagined myself a musician, an entertainer, an artist, I have seen myself as firstly as a collaborator. You could blame the Monkees: they all sang, they all were the stars. But its amazing to think how they prepared me in deeper ways for the life I have: I knew at age four that Michael Nesmith wrote some of the Monkees songs, but so did Neil Diamond. When I moved on to KISS I knew Gene Simmons wrote "Living In Sin At The Holiday Inn" for Bob Seger. (What was he thinking?)

Anyhoo, I have experienced great personal growth as a collaborator and in the past few years have embarked upon collaborations that saw me taking on roles of greater responsibility. This has given me many experiences that have illuminated both in my life and in my work, that all ideas - of onesself, of ones work, of the greater schemes, need a language to communicate. People cannot be expected to interpret. I have found most recently with one group I work with that I will err on the side of over expressing simple ideas, when really there is either enough already understood or there is a need for something wholly different to be communicated.

Slowly I'll reflect, figuring out which mishaps are my reponsibility, conscious that I can be very hard on myself if I'm not careful. Some things I have noticed: I have little experience in operating with visible, healthy confidence, feeling like a pendelum swinging between underwhelming presence or over-assertiveness. I am further sickened by the moments when, out of necessity, I resemble a "player", a stereotype that I have perhaps too much disdain for. A few more: in periods when there was no discernible motivation, I pressured myself to have a clarity of vision when all was fog. This made already tricky moments of collaborating way more tedious and loaded than they needed to be, and cost me some credibility. Sometimes my sensitivity to the others involved slowed me down to the point of losing momentum and focus. Sometimes I knew intuitively that the person(s) simply were not eager to collaborate in the way I had made clear I was offering, and at the stage of the process, there was no time to clarify or change direction. I pushed on as best as I could.

a.m. Sunday - the greatest band in all the land - is finishing our cd. Last week we mixed our 12 songs down in Chicago. The record is the most personal and focused piece of music I have ever been involved in. It is, I hope, a strong step in a direction to the greater endeavor which is letting the world enjoy the minds and spirit of our group for years and years, and to give the members an initial centerpiece of creativity, fulfillment, and income that will enrich all of us and keep us connected and inspired. To me, it has reached a stage where the fog has lifted and we can begin to see what has come of the past few months. It is time now to assess where we are and to make sure that the final release of the record into the ether resonates with the majority of our ambitions. It is an exciting and HORRIFYING time.

Long before we recorded, Darrick and I spoke of our collaboration. He said he wasn't sure if we should be friends since we were going into work together. (He laughed last time I reminded him of this.) Back them, he also worried about the future of this band. He worried about where Suki was with it, where he was, and I'm sure he worried where I was, too. (I did.) Hearing his worries relieved me of the same concerns just long enough to grab from my deeper awareness one simple idea: "We just need to make the best record we can and let the future happen later."

Art speaks for itself. Right now we are all in our seperate corners deciding what it is we have said and how close it was to what we meant. While we strive for clean ears to listen anew, still too aware of the compromises that each of us made in order to complete our project, there is at least the satisfaction (I hope) that what we have achieved thus far is a recording completely uncompromised by outside influence. It has a purity - and while everyone, myself included, will gag on that idea, everyone would have to agree that the record is the result of everything our collaboration could come up with in what was the most unsane period we've experienced since we've been a band. Since the start of our record, the group has encountered breakups, relocations, car wrecks, system malfunctions, romance, cell phone interference, and international intrigue. I can say confidently that we have made a record that is emotionally correct for us. Of course, as I said half-jokingly before our last Louisville show, I am not sure who anyone is now.

I am eager to get reacquainted and see if we have made the record we hoped to, to see what work is to happen next, and to see if Darrick had good reason to worry about the future. In the meantime, I turn back to an Open Circle, aware that all which we see right now is not the completion of the task...

Sunday, February 20, 2005

All My Rowdy Friendsters Stayed At Home Tonight

"Define 'friend'."

The best advice I ever gave myself and, sensing that I was talking down to myself, advice I've yet to take. What, in this life that I have, seems to be the defining thing that bonds me to anyone else? I mean REALLY....

Is it time? Have we simply spent enough time together? Do we look forward to the looks, the sighs, the turns of phrase - are we used to the smells?

Is it suffering? Is my suffering like someone else's so much that I feel a kinship?

Is it joy? Do we find the same things funny, does the same stuff charge the battery?

Is it ambition? Do we reach for the same things with an implicit agreement to allow each other some degree of bullshit because we sense what we're after?

Is it a fever? Are we crazed in ways that compliment each other?

Is it questioning? Do we worry about the same stuff, unsatisfied by the same answers?

Is it that we know each other, warts and all, and still choose to hang around? Do our weaknesses make the other feel better about themselves or is it a duality of pure strength?

Parasite to host? Chocolate to cream? Oxygen Oxygen Hydrogen? Sour mash? Reason to passion? Hug to fencepost?

Is it an idea or is it real? Tangible? Communicable?

Living new in New York City will elevate these questions from navel gazing to matters of supreme urgency as you adjust your mind and struggle to stay connected. There are plenty of people around who can act friend-like and, although not meaning to, will zap the soul of its juices. Maybe it's just that they spend most of their time around other friend-like people. Me and everyone else here wants to be known by another, to reveal. Who doesn't? But many already have their fill of friends and can't afford the time and space. Dreams are dashed quicker and with more regularity than the stops of the F Train, which threaten at every second to carry the familiar faces on to their greater destinies. It's terrifying to let yourself care, yet you want to recognize the people you see everyday, to let them know you see and appreciate. To offer them a sliver of what you would, if things were different, maybe give them in whole: this, I think, is being friend-like. It's a beautiful gesture for your fellow traveler, but that doesn't mean it is enough.

I spent my birthday with two friends. I know this about one of them for sure, the other I believe to be as we get to know each other. Across the Village, some new friends were tearing up some Karaoke with an extended group of their friends. On my cell phone I kept getting calls about "my birthday party" that was raging. "Where are you? Everybody's here!" "We rented a big room for your party, dude!" "We came to see you where are you?" Those that called had to shout over the voices of the rest of the group. I intitally had said I wanted to go, but something was stopping me.

I would have relished having those who called me hanging with my assembled threesome, but my friend Bob wasn't interested in Karaoke and more importantly, I knew that if I showed up I would have been treated excellently, but that the group was not really gathered in my honor. If we went we would have been exposed to a room of friend-like people along with the genuines, and thinking "a bird in the hand", I was not willing to take the risk. On this birthday, "one-year wiser" meant recognizing the difference and respecting it. In the presence of the real thing, I wasn't interested in having the sanctity of my B day co-oped by a single "friend-like" soul.

On "friendster" everyone fills in the blanks about themselves, asks for friends and in some cases are sought out to be someone's friend. It is as simple as asking permission and clicking a mouse. In seconds you have a virtual record of your "friendsters", complete with photos and endearing information. It is an experience that I enjoy (currently not registered) but it speaks nothing to the real responsibility of friendship. Are we in danger? Are we losing something?

Maybe only if we don't define our terms.

"Friendster" and "friend-like". I'm straight as long as I know the difference. I'll be your "friendster" for sure.
I might be friend-like. Maybe that's enough for you. Maybe not. We don't have to define the word the same way to enjoy a symbiotic bond. Again, the point is not to navel gaze here - it is to stay connected or reconnect. I don't really care to chase down a quintissestial definition of the word. Just to ask if I'm doing alright and to consider and celebrate the "elements of me and you" (Wood).

Ray

Saturday, February 19, 2005

The song threads. Criteria #3.

For Chris Hall's article "The Top 5 Rock 'n' Roll Songs Of All Time" (Courier-Journal, Feb.12) I wrote the following:

The word "song" made me think of a composition that would be great regardless of a particularly fantastic recording, which eliminated possibilities like Miles Davis' "Flamenco Sketches" and "Everybody's Got Something To Hide "Except for Me and my Monkey)" by The Beatles. So:

1. The Needle And The Damage Done - Neil Young
2. Shoot To Thrill - AC/DC
3. Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen
4. Stella By Starlight - Ned Washington and Victor Young
5. Workin' in a Coal Mine - Allen Toussaint

I felt good about my list because I didn't pine over it. It was done in 20 minutes. So far, the only song I've thought of that should have been on the list is Gram Parson's "$1000 Wedding" which would enter at #1, except that my criteria sort of disqualifies it because Evan Dando did a shitty version of it a few years ago.

Anyhoo, my friend Bill Born sent me an e-mail for his top five which he based on a different criteria:

1) can't be more than 2 1/2 minutes
2) It's gotta rock
3) You hafta remember where you were when you first heard it

Bill's criteria was inspiring - especially the last point.

Years ago when my Mom was sick she and I drove West. She had never been and I only knew what I'd seen while on a King Kong tour in a van, which was very little. On our way north from Seattle to Vancouver, we stopped at a mall and picked up some tapes to listen to. She found an Eddie Fischer (sp?) tape that excited her. We had been listening to Sinatra for hours (Sinatra would die later that night). Anyway, when Mom put the tape in the player it was immediately apparent to me that Eddie was, um, I guess he was clearly a star, but especially after listening to Sinatra, it was also clear that he had nothing unique or interesting going on.

I started closing down my ears and enjoying the drive when my Mom said, "You know, this music isn't that good, but I like it becauae it reminds me of where I was when I heard it."

In remembering this it hurts me because I didn't ask the obvious question: So Mom, where were you when you heard Eddie Fischer? I was too consumed. Consumed with the ride, with our life, and with ideas of my personal relationship to music which is confused at best. Still, I did manage to gain some powerful insight: different people identify with music for different reasons, and (for those fooled into thinking they can create music) the power of music goes far far beyond one's ability or intention tot create.

This is an insight that turns in my brain as of late, still deepeing my relationship to what I experience with music.

So here's the immediate list that I made before my heard and mind were flooded, based on Bill's Criteria #3:

50 Ways To Leave Your Lover and Southern Nights, both were deep tranmissions from 70's a.m. radio, when I started coming alive and talking to myself, sensing a world beyond my family.

Peg by Steely Dan which - oh, man. This is hard to talk about - it was playing late on WLRS one night when my high school girlfriend stayed over and we.....she....uh.....That SONG!..... it is sooooooooooooo........ Wow wow wow wow.

Then there was Sara by Starship - even harder song to talk about, but unfortuantely one I have words for: My parents were seperated and I was staying over with my Dad. We slept in the same bed in his barely furnished apartment and I was up all night smelling the perfume on the pillow next to his. Sara played over and over on another Louisville station. ALL NIGHT LONG. My only consolation is that "Sara" was a shitty song before it racked up such a bad memory.

Alex Chilton by the Replacements - the first time I heard the band was on Louisville's WFPL on a saturday night. What a powerfuck for the spirit! That was back when Louisville's public radio station wasn't a soon-to-be clear channel station masquerading as a non-profit good agent of music. I know I shouldn't nip at the hand that feeds, but they have to admit that compared to when rock and roll was first played on that station, something has changed and it is dangerously familiar to the early years of commercial station programming. My prayers are with them.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

The Reverend Vince Sings all your favorites

Sunday night at a bar on East 4th Street the Reverend Vince Anderson brought it in full force. I drank a German pilsner beer and watched Torbet hit his drums wearing a shirt that said " The Crack Don't Smoke Itself". At one point Vince rose to the pulpit (!) and expalined that it made sense that Valentines Day was in lent. For you Catholics, this should say it all. For the uninitiated, lent is a time of sacrafice and atonement. His message, accented by the "fuck yeahhhs!" of those in attendence, was that love is not a holiday destination (lent ends with Easter). It ain't Christmas. It is a passage experience that consists of giving up, waiting, and being quiet. It's silent. It's thinking. Good shit.

Afterwards, Suki, Wilder, Paula and I went to East Village Karaoke where I had my first private room Karaoke. I was a little awkward at first because the set up reminded me of booths at the porn shop, the difference being that everything was clean and for the most part the machinery in the rooms worked. Paula's rendition of "Golden" by Jill Scott was a mantra. Wilder rarely finished a song without making sweet love to himself, and Suki singing "Xanadu" helped the universe make some sense. I sang every chance I got and felt good about my read of "everyday I write the book" (how can you not with two women singing the backup parts?) Suki knew at the end of our stay that my cut of the Karaoke cost was more money than I was really prepared to spend, but I assured her that it was worth it. I remembered this tonight when I concocted my second and final meal of the day from tuna and old pasta, and believe me - I am not complaining - the memory made my meal even better.

Over the weekend I had many conversations around the idea of "favorite songs". Having submitted a list to a friend in Louisville that was based on my sense of songs that are great regardless of who does them, I was inspired by my friend Bill to use a different criteria that defined a "best" song as one that you remember where you were when you heard it (this was also a big part of my Mom's enjoyment of music). For an afternoon, I blew my mind apart with memories, enjoying the thought of songs that keep within them some powerful times in my life. Part of me is still the age I was when I first heard them. I discovered some amazing shared connections: everyone around me that day had had a Zen experience with a song that Michael McDonald sang on. Roomie/bandmate Adam and I both share a deep experience with Robbie Dupree's "Steal Away", (a song that if Michael McDonald didn't sing on, he should have.) And roomie/bandmate Paul and I both were forced to like a song that Peter Cetera sang JUST because our girlfriends at the time said it was "our song". His : "You're The Inspiration". Mine: "Glory Of Love".

On a walk to more Karaoke, Suki reminded her friend Jaleel of a time in Louisville when he interupted his pizza delivery to knock on her door just to come in and dance to "Kung Fu Fighting" as it played on the radio. Jaleel bravely confessed to not remembering the occasion and, speaking as all of us at one time or another, said, "I wish I was that person you remember in the story. I'd like to be him." Ah...growing up. We forget! Another case for the greatness of song and the greater-ness of friends.

Tonight I saw a second play about cloning since I arrived here. I've been noticing quite a search for meaning and purpose in creative works as of late. I will wait for a good buzz before I share my take on it all (its really a big part of why I blogged in the first place). But right now I am, like many currently living in this world, far too sober.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Listen.

In the midst of my personal transformation, I'm trying to recognize and act through the wisdom of my senses met with reflection. In the rush towards a new era that is oversaturated with unfulfilling data and stimuli, I think we share more in regards to our misreads than our understanding. At every turn in my life of late I am charting missed opportunities for connection with a greater fabric that bring us echos of home or, for some of us, home itself. I want to make a list of the obstacles, identify them completely, and then burn them down with word, sound and gesture. With the means laid out before me I'll create return transmissions to blast back across the canyon. Because while the arts continue to be reduced to commodities in the constructs of the 20th century, the artist is more vital than ever.

Right now I am focused upon listening, in part, I'm sure, because I am a musician and a lover of sound, but also, I suspect, because I am aware that I am losing my hearing quicker than most. For me, listening to music and sound transmitted from any place, in any medium, gives me great psychic and mystic vibrations that I believe are available to every soul, regardless of where they come from in their expereince of music/sound.

For any skeptics, pick a song - one you know or one you don't - and sit with it for 15 minutes. (For passionate music lovers with opinions that can be defined by genres and radio stations, I challenge you to pick a song by a band/artist you don't have a taste for.) Listen to it once. Respond to how you feel, what it makes you think of. Then listen again. See what changes in you, what changes with the song. Did you close off to it already and "pass judgement" or are you still listening? If not, at what point did you stop listening? Why? What thoughts are floating around the way you feel about the music? Are you aware of the the heart(s) and mind(s) from which the music comes from? Can you get a sense of who they might be? etc. etc.

I'd like to believe that anyone open to the idea of this process will have a deep dialogue with themself, which In my opinion, is the greatest wish of any artist with something to share. (Notice I didn't write "with something to say" - I think the backlash of 20th Century experiences like Bob Dylan inadvertently shut people down in regards to how music - perhaps especially recorded music - can affect their other senses.)

Anyhoo, the end result, I hope, is joyful or at the very least, life-affirming communion.

Off the top of my head, recommended mind-blowing listening: Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis and Has Been by William Shatner. Don't indulge your thoughts about what these recordings are until you've heard them. And if you've heard them, listen again!

Anyone with a passion hit me back with song or thought. I'm listening.