Hey. I wrote a poem this morning. Here it is:
Remorse
When at the bookstore
my mind becomes a starving seal,
performing flips and tricks,
showing its zeal, beckoning
words into the fold to feed
the hunger of the heart.
After a technicolor
beach ball deflates upon
my peak, and my cheek feels
the plastic of purchase, I
leave with five or six
books, guiltless.
That's when I recall
the library
with the simple
sentence
of smell.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
The Chirping Warzone 1
Blaine Hussein shoveled a tiny chasm into the earth of Gloryland National Park in Gloryland, Maine.
He was on a two-week vacation from the security company he worked for. He worked forty-two weeks out of the year. Most other weeks he took long trips to national parks, famous monuments, and aquariums with especially good reputations so he could see and experience the great country he lived in. He was barely ever home.
His security company, RSA Inc., stationed him in a country his home country was at war with. The country was called Barack. He liked Barack because he liked to bird there. The work he did for his company did not appeal to him much, but since his country’s army trained him to comfortably and effectively engage in sophisticated and modern combat and pre-combat scenarios, it was fairly easy for him and didn’t often affect his mood.
Most days, he stood on a clay roof in Samarra. It was a good place to bird. There was the obvious advantage of the height, but also he was stationed on the outskirts of the city where there were less people to scare the birds away.
***
It turns out some of his company’s administrators paid money to the government of Barack to repay them for the deaths of sixty-seven of that country’s civilians. The civilians were killed one morning in about thirty seconds.
The village was crowded and bustling. Twelve RSAs crouched on a roof where they could survey the town and make sure everything was happening the way it was supposed to. They didn’t really know how things were supposed to happen, but they pretended they did. They were convincing pretenders. This was their stealthiest skill.
They had a clear view of a busy street. There was a lot of buying and selling happening. Keeping close watch, they gripped their automatic rifles and eyed the activity below. The head of the crew, Merrick, a Jest Point grad who after being dishonorably discharged immediately joined RSA, ran his finger across the frayed and bent brim of his baseball cap. Oddly, this cap had the logo of a football team, the Maritoba Vikings, embroidered on its face. The simple irony of this struck one of his subordinates at the moment of Merrick’s gesture. It did not sway his poise. They were one. They all ducked low and pointed their rifles toward the street and stared down the barrels, squinting.
A scuffle broke out between a teen-aged boy and an old man who ran a stand that sold fruit. The boy grabbed three pomegranates and started to run. He dropped one in front of him and stepped on it. The slip added to his inertia, pushing him toward a crowd. He tracked the crimson juice for his next three steps, just before he fell. The old man yelled something the RSAs heard but did not understand. Merrick made a loud noise they heard and understood. It was an order.
The government of Barack found that there was no viable reason for the massacre. They threatened to tell the RSA's home country, which would probably cost them their contract and get them into a heap of trouble with the 'people of their country'. RSA offered them one million dollars to keep quiet about the deaths, and the Baracki government accepted.
***
Months later, everyone on the planet learned about the deal. While Blaine Hussein camped in Gloryland, RSA lost its contract.
***
Blaine Hussein squatted over the chasm. Then he refilled it with the same dirt he dug out earlier, which he’d piled strategically next to the hole.
He was on a two-week vacation from the security company he worked for. He worked forty-two weeks out of the year. Most other weeks he took long trips to national parks, famous monuments, and aquariums with especially good reputations so he could see and experience the great country he lived in. He was barely ever home.
His security company, RSA Inc., stationed him in a country his home country was at war with. The country was called Barack. He liked Barack because he liked to bird there. The work he did for his company did not appeal to him much, but since his country’s army trained him to comfortably and effectively engage in sophisticated and modern combat and pre-combat scenarios, it was fairly easy for him and didn’t often affect his mood.
Most days, he stood on a clay roof in Samarra. It was a good place to bird. There was the obvious advantage of the height, but also he was stationed on the outskirts of the city where there were less people to scare the birds away.
***
It turns out some of his company’s administrators paid money to the government of Barack to repay them for the deaths of sixty-seven of that country’s civilians. The civilians were killed one morning in about thirty seconds.
The village was crowded and bustling. Twelve RSAs crouched on a roof where they could survey the town and make sure everything was happening the way it was supposed to. They didn’t really know how things were supposed to happen, but they pretended they did. They were convincing pretenders. This was their stealthiest skill.
They had a clear view of a busy street. There was a lot of buying and selling happening. Keeping close watch, they gripped their automatic rifles and eyed the activity below. The head of the crew, Merrick, a Jest Point grad who after being dishonorably discharged immediately joined RSA, ran his finger across the frayed and bent brim of his baseball cap. Oddly, this cap had the logo of a football team, the Maritoba Vikings, embroidered on its face. The simple irony of this struck one of his subordinates at the moment of Merrick’s gesture. It did not sway his poise. They were one. They all ducked low and pointed their rifles toward the street and stared down the barrels, squinting.
A scuffle broke out between a teen-aged boy and an old man who ran a stand that sold fruit. The boy grabbed three pomegranates and started to run. He dropped one in front of him and stepped on it. The slip added to his inertia, pushing him toward a crowd. He tracked the crimson juice for his next three steps, just before he fell. The old man yelled something the RSAs heard but did not understand. Merrick made a loud noise they heard and understood. It was an order.
The government of Barack found that there was no viable reason for the massacre. They threatened to tell the RSA's home country, which would probably cost them their contract and get them into a heap of trouble with the 'people of their country'. RSA offered them one million dollars to keep quiet about the deaths, and the Baracki government accepted.
***
Months later, everyone on the planet learned about the deal. While Blaine Hussein camped in Gloryland, RSA lost its contract.
***
Blaine Hussein squatted over the chasm. Then he refilled it with the same dirt he dug out earlier, which he’d piled strategically next to the hole.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Trace Hawthorne
With a long stroke she licked the ice cream along the edge of the sugar cone. She drove west on a county road alongside farmhouses and pastures spotted with oak and birch, a trip she only afforded herself on Fridays. She adhered to a strict diet most days, but every Friday when it was warm enough she would take the back way home and get a vanilla cone from the farm stand to celebrate the end of her work week. Completion, the cone said to her, as she drove past straw spirals.
Autumn had appeared in recent days, but it had proven noncommittal. The ice cream demanded constant attention. She managed a hard bend, turning the wheel with her palm, and on the other side a doe stood just ahead looking peaceful and serene. Eyes focused and cone in hand, she swung the car into the left lane, the doe standing there looking peaceful and hollow and hollowly watching the car as it whipped past and on down the road.
She felt the ice cream on her hand. A couple drips of vanilla slid off the base of her pinkie and landed on the black skirt she had worn to work.
***
Her grandmother died when she was six, and at the funeral she wore a black dress that was laced all around with silk ribbons. She remembered the funeral sometimes while driving—her mother telling her that grandma was happy now, her uncle Rob, rubbing her shoulder in the parlor, that scary and disgusting place, her aunt Jodi telling her to go play with the other children outside. Since she didn't cry she took aunt Jodi’s advice and ran around with the other kids. Late that night, in grandma’s backyard, her and Robby hid behind the big willow together during a game of hide and seek. Robby said to her, “We’re not really cousins, right?” She could not recall a reply, but she remembered her black dress all muddy.
***
“Shoot...shit,” she said. She licked the dripping cone, wiped her skirt with fast food napkins, and kept the wheel steady with her knee. She planned on stopping at Friday’s before going home so she wanted to keep neat, but since her skirt was ruined she would have to stop home and change. She felt perturbed and somewhat swindled by fate or coincidence or whatever it was about having to stop home before her Friday wine. She considered going straight home and staying there, foregoing the Friday’s venture entirely since she wasn’t meeting anyone anyway, but she decided that instead she would go straight there, ice cream stain and all.
She reapplied lipstick in the parking lot. Her face was attractive though a bit round and she wore on it most times an utter seriousness akin to a goaltender before a penalty shot, eyes peering, lips pursed. Her large dark eyes were appealing enough—a handful would call them hypnotic and some would say seductive, but her appearance was not to go on trial for the crime of her loneliness. She thought it was the side of her that she inherited from her mother, her stubbornness, her boldness, her frightful honesty, that nudged the men away, but it was rather something else, something she’d developed on her own.
At Friday’s, she sat alone. She read the subtitles of CNN and The Weather Channel and sipped on her house Merlot, and felt a sharp aversion toward the three men across the bar. Why did they have to be so loud with everything they say? Probably couldn’t pull off the stupid algebra it takes to run a simple mortgage. Probably, they wander around bar to bar all night laughing too loud showing off how close of friends they are and how great a time they can have. Deep down they hate each other. There is no man in existence even remotely like Dad. One wearing a Red Bull polo shirt made his way around the bar toward her.
“What’s on your dress?” he asked, smiling. He pointed to her necklace.
“It’s not ice cream and it’s not Red Bull either. I keep a strict diet,” she said. Neither of them spoke. She thought she might have been harsh on him, so not knowing what to do, she continued. “Don’t you think it’s impolite to point out the imperfections on a woman’s clothes? Why must you assail these meager rags?” She tossed her left hand with a Victorian flourish, which surprised her. She felt like she was a character from a book she had read. She downed her Merlot.
He said nothing, but continued to stand in front of her, holding his pint. He looked perplexed, idiotic. The name ‘MARC’ was embroidered on his shirt, below the insignia.
“May I help you?” she said. Nothing. “I need a drink.”
***
That night she knelt behind the big willow with Marc and they both had ice cream cones and they kept melting all over her dress. She sat on a soccer ball. Marc held his cone over the dress too and they spelled out both their names in ice cream, and using the ribbons of her dress they created a makeshift calligraphy and they made out special letters and had a special language that they used to convey secrets to one another, secrets too secret for normal words, symbols with no sound and only sense, symbols that pounded feelings directly into the heart, foregoing mind entirely, symbols that stripped a layer of culture from between them, and all the other people laid outside their circle, their system. From their vantage behind the tree, they saw the source of the smoke they’d been smelling all night. Grampa emptied his pipe, banging it rhythmically, one, two, one, against a hickory tree. They heard a rustling branch and saw Grampa point left. The night was darker. She looked at her dress and became disgusted with herself. She felt her face contorting, squeezing into knots. She looked at Marc and Marc saw her face turn blacker than coal. “I keep a strict diet,” she said, repeated, emphasized, screamed—and awoke Saturday morning.
“Mnmmm...wha?”
Autumn had appeared in recent days, but it had proven noncommittal. The ice cream demanded constant attention. She managed a hard bend, turning the wheel with her palm, and on the other side a doe stood just ahead looking peaceful and serene. Eyes focused and cone in hand, she swung the car into the left lane, the doe standing there looking peaceful and hollow and hollowly watching the car as it whipped past and on down the road.
She felt the ice cream on her hand. A couple drips of vanilla slid off the base of her pinkie and landed on the black skirt she had worn to work.
***
Her grandmother died when she was six, and at the funeral she wore a black dress that was laced all around with silk ribbons. She remembered the funeral sometimes while driving—her mother telling her that grandma was happy now, her uncle Rob, rubbing her shoulder in the parlor, that scary and disgusting place, her aunt Jodi telling her to go play with the other children outside. Since she didn't cry she took aunt Jodi’s advice and ran around with the other kids. Late that night, in grandma’s backyard, her and Robby hid behind the big willow together during a game of hide and seek. Robby said to her, “We’re not really cousins, right?” She could not recall a reply, but she remembered her black dress all muddy.
***
“Shoot...shit,” she said. She licked the dripping cone, wiped her skirt with fast food napkins, and kept the wheel steady with her knee. She planned on stopping at Friday’s before going home so she wanted to keep neat, but since her skirt was ruined she would have to stop home and change. She felt perturbed and somewhat swindled by fate or coincidence or whatever it was about having to stop home before her Friday wine. She considered going straight home and staying there, foregoing the Friday’s venture entirely since she wasn’t meeting anyone anyway, but she decided that instead she would go straight there, ice cream stain and all.
She reapplied lipstick in the parking lot. Her face was attractive though a bit round and she wore on it most times an utter seriousness akin to a goaltender before a penalty shot, eyes peering, lips pursed. Her large dark eyes were appealing enough—a handful would call them hypnotic and some would say seductive, but her appearance was not to go on trial for the crime of her loneliness. She thought it was the side of her that she inherited from her mother, her stubbornness, her boldness, her frightful honesty, that nudged the men away, but it was rather something else, something she’d developed on her own.
At Friday’s, she sat alone. She read the subtitles of CNN and The Weather Channel and sipped on her house Merlot, and felt a sharp aversion toward the three men across the bar. Why did they have to be so loud with everything they say? Probably couldn’t pull off the stupid algebra it takes to run a simple mortgage. Probably, they wander around bar to bar all night laughing too loud showing off how close of friends they are and how great a time they can have. Deep down they hate each other. There is no man in existence even remotely like Dad. One wearing a Red Bull polo shirt made his way around the bar toward her.
“What’s on your dress?” he asked, smiling. He pointed to her necklace.
“It’s not ice cream and it’s not Red Bull either. I keep a strict diet,” she said. Neither of them spoke. She thought she might have been harsh on him, so not knowing what to do, she continued. “Don’t you think it’s impolite to point out the imperfections on a woman’s clothes? Why must you assail these meager rags?” She tossed her left hand with a Victorian flourish, which surprised her. She felt like she was a character from a book she had read. She downed her Merlot.
He said nothing, but continued to stand in front of her, holding his pint. He looked perplexed, idiotic. The name ‘MARC’ was embroidered on his shirt, below the insignia.
“May I help you?” she said. Nothing. “I need a drink.”
***
That night she knelt behind the big willow with Marc and they both had ice cream cones and they kept melting all over her dress. She sat on a soccer ball. Marc held his cone over the dress too and they spelled out both their names in ice cream, and using the ribbons of her dress they created a makeshift calligraphy and they made out special letters and had a special language that they used to convey secrets to one another, secrets too secret for normal words, symbols with no sound and only sense, symbols that pounded feelings directly into the heart, foregoing mind entirely, symbols that stripped a layer of culture from between them, and all the other people laid outside their circle, their system. From their vantage behind the tree, they saw the source of the smoke they’d been smelling all night. Grampa emptied his pipe, banging it rhythmically, one, two, one, against a hickory tree. They heard a rustling branch and saw Grampa point left. The night was darker. She looked at her dress and became disgusted with herself. She felt her face contorting, squeezing into knots. She looked at Marc and Marc saw her face turn blacker than coal. “I keep a strict diet,” she said, repeated, emphasized, screamed—and awoke Saturday morning.
“Mnmmm...wha?”
Friday, June 12, 2009
Secret, Profane, and...Starbucks?
My birthday this year was seasoned with delight by my receipt of the new Elvis Costello album Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane. This ration of sugared seasoning was enhanced by Mr. Costello's apropos mention of my hometown Poughkeepsie, NY, when in the track "Sulfur to Sugarcane," he spits: "The women in Poughkeepsie take their clothes off when they're tipsy." As a lifelong resident of the area, I feel slighted that I've never witnessed this phenomenon myself, but I assume his observation is accurate.
While listening through the album, enjoying its fine production (provided by legendary producer T-Bone Burnett) and stripped-down, bluesy shuffle, I found it to be one of the easier listens of Costello's recent releases, not that albums like The Delivery Man, North, or Momofuku are especially challenging, but this one plays through straight and smooth with little by the way of surprise, and with a steady hand in instrumentation that is uncharacteristic of the usually varied Costello productions. The songs carry all the charm and sophistication that we've come to expect, bundled up in a tasteful, inoffensive package that marks an alteration of sorts with its mellow sheen and unfailing consistence. Turning into my driveway, listening and mulling through such thoughts, I thought I'd sit and listen to another tune before turning off the power and walking inside. While listening I squinted at the small print at the bottom of the package, in accordance with habit, and found that Starbucks! is responsible for the release of this album.
I boiled over with the typical rage and indignation I feel when I discover art I enjoy is supported by amoral tyrannical corporations, but this subsided quickly, as I recall that I've never heard a note of Costello's music that hasn't been filtered through a major label, aside, perhaps, from the one time I saw him and the Imposters live, although even this is questionable, for the great amount of capital needed to produce a concert on that level needs the support of a fairly large business. Also, Starbucks is a corporation I know little about, though I have seen them put a number of small coffeeshops out of business, but not by undercutting prices, but rather partly because people like it and also because it seems that in the current cultural climate, in which PR reigns supreme in individual decision making, many people favor recognized brands over local or regional allies. But, as I like to say, corporate greed is redundant.
Then it dawned on me. What I was listening to was a soundtrack made precisely for play inside an actual Starbucks, to create the ambiance of a genuine coffeeshop amid the typical machinations of mass production, something Starbucks does remarkably well. And if anything is redeeming about this whole thing, it's that Costello is doing the same thing here that he did when he signed on the dotted line in the mid-70's--he's bringing his impeccable talents to where the most people are. The only regrettable thing here is that everyone crowds into a Starbucks while the locals' brew goes stale, and the songs of someone who I personally idolize has helped bring them there. Hopefully there's a kid, dragged in by his parents, who hears that entirely unique voice, and goes home, does some internet research, and pulls a dusty copy of This Year's Model out of his parents' record bin before it is devoured by fungi.
While listening through the album, enjoying its fine production (provided by legendary producer T-Bone Burnett) and stripped-down, bluesy shuffle, I found it to be one of the easier listens of Costello's recent releases, not that albums like The Delivery Man, North, or Momofuku are especially challenging, but this one plays through straight and smooth with little by the way of surprise, and with a steady hand in instrumentation that is uncharacteristic of the usually varied Costello productions. The songs carry all the charm and sophistication that we've come to expect, bundled up in a tasteful, inoffensive package that marks an alteration of sorts with its mellow sheen and unfailing consistence. Turning into my driveway, listening and mulling through such thoughts, I thought I'd sit and listen to another tune before turning off the power and walking inside. While listening I squinted at the small print at the bottom of the package, in accordance with habit, and found that Starbucks! is responsible for the release of this album.
I boiled over with the typical rage and indignation I feel when I discover art I enjoy is supported by amoral tyrannical corporations, but this subsided quickly, as I recall that I've never heard a note of Costello's music that hasn't been filtered through a major label, aside, perhaps, from the one time I saw him and the Imposters live, although even this is questionable, for the great amount of capital needed to produce a concert on that level needs the support of a fairly large business. Also, Starbucks is a corporation I know little about, though I have seen them put a number of small coffeeshops out of business, but not by undercutting prices, but rather partly because people like it and also because it seems that in the current cultural climate, in which PR reigns supreme in individual decision making, many people favor recognized brands over local or regional allies. But, as I like to say, corporate greed is redundant.
Then it dawned on me. What I was listening to was a soundtrack made precisely for play inside an actual Starbucks, to create the ambiance of a genuine coffeeshop amid the typical machinations of mass production, something Starbucks does remarkably well. And if anything is redeeming about this whole thing, it's that Costello is doing the same thing here that he did when he signed on the dotted line in the mid-70's--he's bringing his impeccable talents to where the most people are. The only regrettable thing here is that everyone crowds into a Starbucks while the locals' brew goes stale, and the songs of someone who I personally idolize has helped bring them there. Hopefully there's a kid, dragged in by his parents, who hears that entirely unique voice, and goes home, does some internet research, and pulls a dusty copy of This Year's Model out of his parents' record bin before it is devoured by fungi.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Somewhere In America Speaks
Lena does not care what is in her head; so she does not know. She does not often recall a morning in school when the teacher read her “The Jabberwocky” and she listened sincerely for the first time to her language. She does not notice in her head a morning when she was eight and she found ten dead butterflies and catalogued them by the marks on their backs, piling similar patterns on top of one another, and ordered them from left to right by their relative amounts of black, while waiting for the bus at the spot where her dusty street meets the paved road that leads to the river and to the school. She has no conscious recollection of the words “We’re all mad here” being read to her, or of the time when, while burrowed in bed, she heard her father quietly sing “It’s dreamy weather” from the kitchen and she felt tingles and her body connected to itself in a new formulation, so she could touch her toe to her finger by sheer will of being—without actually moving, she thought, her toe became her finger, and hence had touched it. But she does not remember.
“I am like a ditch with a stream groaning through the rock and mud in its belly. I dream I am a lily that grows from the wall of the ditch, and reaches out, forever toward the canopy,” she says, not thinking, “heliotrope” or “we’re all mad here.”
“I am like the sun,” he replies, and thinks I am like away. It is night.
They wait for words but none come. The moon droops tonight and the fireflies in the yard and back by the sycamore show much more energy, exuberance, and gall than the sighing gibbous moon as it falls closer to the horizon in morbid descent. They live on a block of eight small houses, one of which loses a piece of siding or shingle at least once a day, the weather slowly but persistently devouring its vacant prey, grinding its various teeth deliberately and without mercy. But unlike some houses in such conditions, the yard does not overgrow—like all the other houses in the neighborhood, its yard is bare of vegetation aside from a layer of tan dirt. Next to it, in the corner of the nine lot square, lies a vacant lot in which grows a giant sycamore, its branches reaching both upward and outward with a mixture of zeal and confusion, branches twisting and soaring, its trunk (the children decided one day—this she does not remember either) the size of at least ten youths, its bark like the skin of an elephant, camouflaged and peeling. To the credit of the town planners, there is a house in the center, surrounded by houses and inaccessible by car except through the Watsons’ long driveway, but the Watsons do not park in their yard, so the path is always blocked. William Weber, inhabitant of the center house, usually parks on the street.
Lena wears red and pink Kellogg’s ankle socks; that is, ankle socks with a Kellogg’s insignia embroidered on each face and stripes of pink and red behind the embroidery. She had gotten them the week before out of a box of Frosted Flakes that her mother procured from Jacobson’s Market after passing the clerk a ticket. Dirt covers the bottoms of her ankle socks and dust darkens the lower parts of her otherwise blank shins, which connect to her pale translucent legs, exposed because it is only April and her shorts are very short still and her skin is still very modest, innocent. Every year around June the opaque cover would spoil over with a sheet of boiled lobster red, and for the next few months, the people would notice the red layers begin to peel as snakes, and proceed until two weeks later there resides again upon her legs a fresh layer of pale translucent tissue paper, born anew. For the rest of the summer she would wear light dresses of orange and red and smell of fresh cherries and banana peels, avocado and preserve.
Lena sits with John the Bartender on John the Bartender’s porch. John the Bartender had his sixteenth birthday party earlier today, and he bartended the event. He does not consider it work and in fact considers it a gift, because he wants to be a bartender. The porchlight illuminates little so John the Bartender laboriously scans the pages of Ulysses Annotated, barely making out the names of drinking songs and English translations of momentary pidgin upshots from transient combinations of Dubliners. Lena notices that the moon is closer to the chimneys than it was when they stopped talking.
“When does he come home?”
“Why do you care?” John does not look up and scold her with eyes but wants to. He reads of Chrysostomos’ golden teeth. He wants to talk but he is vanquished by the dual spires of resentment and jealousy.
Mitch had left the day before on a Red Cross mission in Khartoum. He was to fly into Cairo and proceed to Khartoum by boat. Before he left he had been a bartender at Sammy’s Pub, the only pub in town. He always knew how to joke with the old people, to become one of their own, to infiltrate the fabric of generations, and when he entered the circle of elderly folks, he always acted and spoke in a way that subtly conveyed reverence, respect, and a sense that he regarded these people as treasures. Everyone in town attended his farewell except John the Bartender, who, although he said his goodbyes earlier, still believed his absence from the gathering to be a statement of protest. John’s resentments were never so gloriously displayed, but big brothers anger little.
At Mitch’s departure party, John watched from a small basement window as Mitch made his way around, speaking to nearly everyone, incessantly smiling and shaking hands, exceedingly charming them all, in a straight line from one end of the street to the other, the entire length of the party. He guzzled four Budweiser cans on his journey. When he reached the end of the line he was surrounded by a circle of about twenty, all actively conversing amongst one another with words and hands. John could see and hear with ease from his window, a mere ten feet or so from the gathered group. Amongst many words pertaining to what good work Mitch was doing and what great work he would do and what a downer the pub will be in his absence, a voice, small but full of melody, spoke from just above the basement window. It was Lena. She spoke quietly and slowly, and another brasher but no less feminine voice answered back; it belonged to Jen Weber. The two spoke back and forth for ten minutes or so, at sometimes painfully gentle and at others in crescendo, and as they did, John, hearing every word, huddled into a ball and shook, enveloped within his own silence, and became John the Bartender.
The moon droops further and the fireflies are out. John the Bartender leans in. She says: “This feels sour. I can smell the buds forming. The modern Mary is always knocked up by a boy.” She thinks I am not away. The branches in the great sycamore do battle, swords wielded by the wind. “I hear the Wapping,” she says.
“I am like a ditch with a stream groaning through the rock and mud in its belly. I dream I am a lily that grows from the wall of the ditch, and reaches out, forever toward the canopy,” she says, not thinking, “heliotrope” or “we’re all mad here.”
“I am like the sun,” he replies, and thinks I am like away. It is night.
They wait for words but none come. The moon droops tonight and the fireflies in the yard and back by the sycamore show much more energy, exuberance, and gall than the sighing gibbous moon as it falls closer to the horizon in morbid descent. They live on a block of eight small houses, one of which loses a piece of siding or shingle at least once a day, the weather slowly but persistently devouring its vacant prey, grinding its various teeth deliberately and without mercy. But unlike some houses in such conditions, the yard does not overgrow—like all the other houses in the neighborhood, its yard is bare of vegetation aside from a layer of tan dirt. Next to it, in the corner of the nine lot square, lies a vacant lot in which grows a giant sycamore, its branches reaching both upward and outward with a mixture of zeal and confusion, branches twisting and soaring, its trunk (the children decided one day—this she does not remember either) the size of at least ten youths, its bark like the skin of an elephant, camouflaged and peeling. To the credit of the town planners, there is a house in the center, surrounded by houses and inaccessible by car except through the Watsons’ long driveway, but the Watsons do not park in their yard, so the path is always blocked. William Weber, inhabitant of the center house, usually parks on the street.
Lena wears red and pink Kellogg’s ankle socks; that is, ankle socks with a Kellogg’s insignia embroidered on each face and stripes of pink and red behind the embroidery. She had gotten them the week before out of a box of Frosted Flakes that her mother procured from Jacobson’s Market after passing the clerk a ticket. Dirt covers the bottoms of her ankle socks and dust darkens the lower parts of her otherwise blank shins, which connect to her pale translucent legs, exposed because it is only April and her shorts are very short still and her skin is still very modest, innocent. Every year around June the opaque cover would spoil over with a sheet of boiled lobster red, and for the next few months, the people would notice the red layers begin to peel as snakes, and proceed until two weeks later there resides again upon her legs a fresh layer of pale translucent tissue paper, born anew. For the rest of the summer she would wear light dresses of orange and red and smell of fresh cherries and banana peels, avocado and preserve.
Lena sits with John the Bartender on John the Bartender’s porch. John the Bartender had his sixteenth birthday party earlier today, and he bartended the event. He does not consider it work and in fact considers it a gift, because he wants to be a bartender. The porchlight illuminates little so John the Bartender laboriously scans the pages of Ulysses Annotated, barely making out the names of drinking songs and English translations of momentary pidgin upshots from transient combinations of Dubliners. Lena notices that the moon is closer to the chimneys than it was when they stopped talking.
“When does he come home?”
“Why do you care?” John does not look up and scold her with eyes but wants to. He reads of Chrysostomos’ golden teeth. He wants to talk but he is vanquished by the dual spires of resentment and jealousy.
Mitch had left the day before on a Red Cross mission in Khartoum. He was to fly into Cairo and proceed to Khartoum by boat. Before he left he had been a bartender at Sammy’s Pub, the only pub in town. He always knew how to joke with the old people, to become one of their own, to infiltrate the fabric of generations, and when he entered the circle of elderly folks, he always acted and spoke in a way that subtly conveyed reverence, respect, and a sense that he regarded these people as treasures. Everyone in town attended his farewell except John the Bartender, who, although he said his goodbyes earlier, still believed his absence from the gathering to be a statement of protest. John’s resentments were never so gloriously displayed, but big brothers anger little.
At Mitch’s departure party, John watched from a small basement window as Mitch made his way around, speaking to nearly everyone, incessantly smiling and shaking hands, exceedingly charming them all, in a straight line from one end of the street to the other, the entire length of the party. He guzzled four Budweiser cans on his journey. When he reached the end of the line he was surrounded by a circle of about twenty, all actively conversing amongst one another with words and hands. John could see and hear with ease from his window, a mere ten feet or so from the gathered group. Amongst many words pertaining to what good work Mitch was doing and what great work he would do and what a downer the pub will be in his absence, a voice, small but full of melody, spoke from just above the basement window. It was Lena. She spoke quietly and slowly, and another brasher but no less feminine voice answered back; it belonged to Jen Weber. The two spoke back and forth for ten minutes or so, at sometimes painfully gentle and at others in crescendo, and as they did, John, hearing every word, huddled into a ball and shook, enveloped within his own silence, and became John the Bartender.
The moon droops further and the fireflies are out. John the Bartender leans in. She says: “This feels sour. I can smell the buds forming. The modern Mary is always knocked up by a boy.” She thinks I am not away. The branches in the great sycamore do battle, swords wielded by the wind. “I hear the Wapping,” she says.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Music Business
concerning my band...
Usually it is the shows a band plays that have the strongest impact on its members.
Back when all of us were most of When Dreams Die, we went through a grueling period in which we would play a few ‘showcase’ shows a month at the clubs of lower Manhattan, most of them on weeknights. The rides down were usually stressful; we had either Greg’s poor old van or my poor little Kia pulling a trailer over a sea of potholes and through the swarms of aggressive cabbies to a club that we’d been to before (or have we??) but could not find amid the myriad side streets. Once the club was located, we drove around for another thirty minutes to find a parking spot that would fit the vehicle and the trailer, which was usually about six blocks away from the club. My guitar cabinet has two broken wheels now, and I believe I rightfully trace their demise back to those shows and the many long commutes from trailer to venue. Incidentally, every show was on either a cold or rainy night.
On one such evening, while pushing my cabinet through throngs of local scenester/hipsters in the pouring rain over a sidewalk that seemed to resist my actions with the strength of the entire city behind it, I crossed the street directly in front of a turning taxi. It missed me, literally, by inches; luckily, the cab passed behind and not in front of me, so my cabinet was already out of the way. Either way, it was one of those moments you walk away from saying, “I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive” before berating yourself for not being aware enough and for almost dying a pitiful and painful death at the blame of your own stupidity. I was distracted by the task at hand. The show might turn out well. Look at all the kids everywhere. They’re out, even though it’s rainy. They must be going to the show.
They weren’t. From what I remember, that show wasn’t much of a success, but it’s hard to tell because all the shows we played during that run have melded into a somewhat vague memory, as if they all happened on a single dreary and soaked night. It is also easy to tell, because none of them were really successful at all—but then again there are many gauges for success, and the one I’m alluding to here, popularity, isn’t something we were or are heavily into. Upon the opaque pond of those shows, however, some images float: the rain and cold, of course; a restaurant through which we had to carefully navigate with hands and arms full of equipment, interrupting everyone’s good time and general feeling of comfort and relaxation; the great beers and hilarious conversations we had together after load-in; a dark staircase, whose walls were lined with countless photocopied fliers, all entirely filled with bands I’d never heard of nor would ever, lit by a single blue lightbulb hanging by a string at the top; a hasty, frowning door guy at the bottom of those stairs telling us that we are late, that we brought too much equipment and that there is no room for our merch; a moody, half-sloshed, and irreverent sound guy also telling us that we brought too much equipment and that things would really run a lot smoother if we used their drum set (weak and in disrepair) and their guitar amps (30-watt solid state combo), which was followed by our utter refusal of his suggestion and our explanation of what we went through to get the equipment there and how much it meant to our sound, and after that his response of a worse mood, further irreverence, and complete drunkenness; playing with bands that have more of a physical resemblance to us than a musical one—we were all human, after all—Jamiroquai comes to mind; the nearly empty rooms we played in; the very small amount we were paid; the very high levels of enjoyment and excitement we experienced nonetheless.
Apart from this mush of ten or twelve shows that were all very alike, one remains quite clear, and I do believe it was our final showcase in Manhattan. If I could label our music then as ‘not terrible’, I must also include that it was decidedly not marketable, despite whatever we may have thought at the time. However, we had a manager—our friend Alex from Self Decay—who was starting to become closely involved with the record industry in New York. He was responsible for getting us these shows, I suppose with the distant hope that some A&R person would show up at one of them and like us. At this particular show—I think it was at the Lion’s Den—Alex had arranged for a few industry people to come see us, including a well-established and well-known booking agent who had heard our music and was very fond of it, and some other people from reputable labels that put out releases near our aesthetic. This was quite exciting for us then, and as we packed our equipment into the trailer that day, we were childlike and giddy. As we pulled out of the driveway, we laughed and joked with each other and discussed how pumped we were for the show, now just hours away. It was our night. Our chance to finally prove ourselves and to get somewhere with our music was here.
We were about twenty miles down the Thruway when the van started slowing under the weight of the trailer. There was a rest stop just ahead, and since we couldn’t get the van above 30mph, we pulled in. There we were, hopeless, stuck, with our chance at making music our careers at stake. For thirty seconds or so, we sighed forlorn sighs as our eagerness leaked out of us;
now to the moment at hand;
Jay, after a moment of resignation, swings the door open, slides out with a bit of a leap, slams it shut. He walks across the lot to the sidewalk and starts pacing. He pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket, presses buttons, puts it to his ear. He continues to pace, talking quickly, listening, talking. The phone comes down again—he presses more buttons, still pacing fervently. Passers-by visibly avoid the mad pacing lunatic. He talks again, rapidly, in a voice that is nearly audible to us from the van. He puts the phone back into his pocket and continues pacing, pacing, without a glance in our direction. He yanks out the phone again and talks, listens, hangs up. He approaches the van with a hint of a grin peeking through the determination stamped on his face.
Our friend Bones was coming with All Out War’s van. Although we were going to be late, we would make it after all. Nothing could stop us; fate would bring us there.
It was a bright and warm early summer evening, so we stood around outside making each other laugh by trading absurd and primarily offensive alterations of famous people’s names, and after about 45 minutes, Bones arrived with the van. We transplanted our gear and personal belongings and left. We were proud of our stubbornness, our indefatigable collective will; we would not flounder; we would persevere through any setback. Alex assured us on the phone that the people he expected had already arrived and eagerly awaited our performance. We were set to go on at 9 o’clock. It was 8:30 and we had about an hour’s drive ahead of us. Though we’d be a little late, there would still be time to play. Things were looking up.
We hit very little traffic. We’d become pretty well experienced in navigating the trek and we knew the efficient routes by instinct. By the time we’d reached Manhattan, the setting sun had been covered over by dark disorganized clouds and a drizzle formed, seemingly from the air in front of us. One street away. A quick load-in and we were on.
Not quite. We pulled up and saw Alex on a bench outside the club talking with a large man who had a goatee and seemed to have his feet unusually well planted on the ground beneath the bench. We drove ourselves parallel to their bench, at the same time trying to quickly eye down a convenient place to park. We looked over to them, probably with our excitement visibly swimming in our collective eyeballs. He shook his head. It was the bad kind—not up and down but from side to side. We stopped looking, pulled over, and put on our flashers.
“You guys can’t play. It’s too late.”
We already held certain opinions about the staff at this club, but this topped it. We didn’t bother parking. With our heads out of the windows, we talked to him for a bit and met his friend who we found out was a booking agent for national acts and was very disappointed that he didn’t get to see us. To him, a band missing a show must surely have meant its inevitable death. He was a booking agent, for chris’sake. And if he’d decided he liked us enough to book us, this is how we would repay him? Forty minutes late, two hours late for load-in. He’d already wasted the night coming out. A couple people from labels were there earlier, but Alex told us they had left after the club decided we weren’t playing. We said our goodbyes and our nice-to-meet-you’s and our sorry to be the main performers of a non-event’s, and turned the All Out War van around right in front of Alex from Self Decay and his friend.
It was a quiet ride home that night, but each of our heads was reeling. The drizzle was in our minds and on the windshield, but amid the haze of disbelief and disappointment, a reorganization occurred within me. So much was banking on this show; it was the culmination of all the nights of showcases and the only one of them all that would amount to a professional move forward.
As we got off the exit for Poughkeepsie, we slowly roused ourselves from our introspectiveness. I leaned against the bare steel wall of the van, quiet, and as my comrades began to pass jokes around and laugh and talk, I sensed a mild lingering strain of melancholy in their voices, but it was already nearly stamped out and soon it would be complete. Going over the night in my head, I decided it was a success and that none of it really mattered.
We did not rush while unloading our equipment that night. We moved in each part one by one, back to where it belonged, its home, our basement. And as we placed the cabinets into their positions, situated in front of the fungi growing on the walls and atop the platforms where the water couldn’t reach, they seemed to take on an air of relief. This was where the real work of the business of music-making would be done, the only aspect of the ‘music business’ that we cared about. We could be as loud as we wanted, use our own equipment, and create, without anyone else’s opinion of us to impede upon us as we grew, in harmony with the mushrooms on the walls.
Usually it is the shows a band plays that have the strongest impact on its members.
Back when all of us were most of When Dreams Die, we went through a grueling period in which we would play a few ‘showcase’ shows a month at the clubs of lower Manhattan, most of them on weeknights. The rides down were usually stressful; we had either Greg’s poor old van or my poor little Kia pulling a trailer over a sea of potholes and through the swarms of aggressive cabbies to a club that we’d been to before (or have we??) but could not find amid the myriad side streets. Once the club was located, we drove around for another thirty minutes to find a parking spot that would fit the vehicle and the trailer, which was usually about six blocks away from the club. My guitar cabinet has two broken wheels now, and I believe I rightfully trace their demise back to those shows and the many long commutes from trailer to venue. Incidentally, every show was on either a cold or rainy night.
On one such evening, while pushing my cabinet through throngs of local scenester/hipsters in the pouring rain over a sidewalk that seemed to resist my actions with the strength of the entire city behind it, I crossed the street directly in front of a turning taxi. It missed me, literally, by inches; luckily, the cab passed behind and not in front of me, so my cabinet was already out of the way. Either way, it was one of those moments you walk away from saying, “I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive” before berating yourself for not being aware enough and for almost dying a pitiful and painful death at the blame of your own stupidity. I was distracted by the task at hand. The show might turn out well. Look at all the kids everywhere. They’re out, even though it’s rainy. They must be going to the show.
They weren’t. From what I remember, that show wasn’t much of a success, but it’s hard to tell because all the shows we played during that run have melded into a somewhat vague memory, as if they all happened on a single dreary and soaked night. It is also easy to tell, because none of them were really successful at all—but then again there are many gauges for success, and the one I’m alluding to here, popularity, isn’t something we were or are heavily into. Upon the opaque pond of those shows, however, some images float: the rain and cold, of course; a restaurant through which we had to carefully navigate with hands and arms full of equipment, interrupting everyone’s good time and general feeling of comfort and relaxation; the great beers and hilarious conversations we had together after load-in; a dark staircase, whose walls were lined with countless photocopied fliers, all entirely filled with bands I’d never heard of nor would ever, lit by a single blue lightbulb hanging by a string at the top; a hasty, frowning door guy at the bottom of those stairs telling us that we are late, that we brought too much equipment and that there is no room for our merch; a moody, half-sloshed, and irreverent sound guy also telling us that we brought too much equipment and that things would really run a lot smoother if we used their drum set (weak and in disrepair) and their guitar amps (30-watt solid state combo), which was followed by our utter refusal of his suggestion and our explanation of what we went through to get the equipment there and how much it meant to our sound, and after that his response of a worse mood, further irreverence, and complete drunkenness; playing with bands that have more of a physical resemblance to us than a musical one—we were all human, after all—Jamiroquai comes to mind; the nearly empty rooms we played in; the very small amount we were paid; the very high levels of enjoyment and excitement we experienced nonetheless.
Apart from this mush of ten or twelve shows that were all very alike, one remains quite clear, and I do believe it was our final showcase in Manhattan. If I could label our music then as ‘not terrible’, I must also include that it was decidedly not marketable, despite whatever we may have thought at the time. However, we had a manager—our friend Alex from Self Decay—who was starting to become closely involved with the record industry in New York. He was responsible for getting us these shows, I suppose with the distant hope that some A&R person would show up at one of them and like us. At this particular show—I think it was at the Lion’s Den—Alex had arranged for a few industry people to come see us, including a well-established and well-known booking agent who had heard our music and was very fond of it, and some other people from reputable labels that put out releases near our aesthetic. This was quite exciting for us then, and as we packed our equipment into the trailer that day, we were childlike and giddy. As we pulled out of the driveway, we laughed and joked with each other and discussed how pumped we were for the show, now just hours away. It was our night. Our chance to finally prove ourselves and to get somewhere with our music was here.
We were about twenty miles down the Thruway when the van started slowing under the weight of the trailer. There was a rest stop just ahead, and since we couldn’t get the van above 30mph, we pulled in. There we were, hopeless, stuck, with our chance at making music our careers at stake. For thirty seconds or so, we sighed forlorn sighs as our eagerness leaked out of us;
now to the moment at hand;
Jay, after a moment of resignation, swings the door open, slides out with a bit of a leap, slams it shut. He walks across the lot to the sidewalk and starts pacing. He pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket, presses buttons, puts it to his ear. He continues to pace, talking quickly, listening, talking. The phone comes down again—he presses more buttons, still pacing fervently. Passers-by visibly avoid the mad pacing lunatic. He talks again, rapidly, in a voice that is nearly audible to us from the van. He puts the phone back into his pocket and continues pacing, pacing, without a glance in our direction. He yanks out the phone again and talks, listens, hangs up. He approaches the van with a hint of a grin peeking through the determination stamped on his face.
Our friend Bones was coming with All Out War’s van. Although we were going to be late, we would make it after all. Nothing could stop us; fate would bring us there.
It was a bright and warm early summer evening, so we stood around outside making each other laugh by trading absurd and primarily offensive alterations of famous people’s names, and after about 45 minutes, Bones arrived with the van. We transplanted our gear and personal belongings and left. We were proud of our stubbornness, our indefatigable collective will; we would not flounder; we would persevere through any setback. Alex assured us on the phone that the people he expected had already arrived and eagerly awaited our performance. We were set to go on at 9 o’clock. It was 8:30 and we had about an hour’s drive ahead of us. Though we’d be a little late, there would still be time to play. Things were looking up.
We hit very little traffic. We’d become pretty well experienced in navigating the trek and we knew the efficient routes by instinct. By the time we’d reached Manhattan, the setting sun had been covered over by dark disorganized clouds and a drizzle formed, seemingly from the air in front of us. One street away. A quick load-in and we were on.
Not quite. We pulled up and saw Alex on a bench outside the club talking with a large man who had a goatee and seemed to have his feet unusually well planted on the ground beneath the bench. We drove ourselves parallel to their bench, at the same time trying to quickly eye down a convenient place to park. We looked over to them, probably with our excitement visibly swimming in our collective eyeballs. He shook his head. It was the bad kind—not up and down but from side to side. We stopped looking, pulled over, and put on our flashers.
“You guys can’t play. It’s too late.”
We already held certain opinions about the staff at this club, but this topped it. We didn’t bother parking. With our heads out of the windows, we talked to him for a bit and met his friend who we found out was a booking agent for national acts and was very disappointed that he didn’t get to see us. To him, a band missing a show must surely have meant its inevitable death. He was a booking agent, for chris’sake. And if he’d decided he liked us enough to book us, this is how we would repay him? Forty minutes late, two hours late for load-in. He’d already wasted the night coming out. A couple people from labels were there earlier, but Alex told us they had left after the club decided we weren’t playing. We said our goodbyes and our nice-to-meet-you’s and our sorry to be the main performers of a non-event’s, and turned the All Out War van around right in front of Alex from Self Decay and his friend.
It was a quiet ride home that night, but each of our heads was reeling. The drizzle was in our minds and on the windshield, but amid the haze of disbelief and disappointment, a reorganization occurred within me. So much was banking on this show; it was the culmination of all the nights of showcases and the only one of them all that would amount to a professional move forward.
As we got off the exit for Poughkeepsie, we slowly roused ourselves from our introspectiveness. I leaned against the bare steel wall of the van, quiet, and as my comrades began to pass jokes around and laugh and talk, I sensed a mild lingering strain of melancholy in their voices, but it was already nearly stamped out and soon it would be complete. Going over the night in my head, I decided it was a success and that none of it really mattered.
We did not rush while unloading our equipment that night. We moved in each part one by one, back to where it belonged, its home, our basement. And as we placed the cabinets into their positions, situated in front of the fungi growing on the walls and atop the platforms where the water couldn’t reach, they seemed to take on an air of relief. This was where the real work of the business of music-making would be done, the only aspect of the ‘music business’ that we cared about. We could be as loud as we wanted, use our own equipment, and create, without anyone else’s opinion of us to impede upon us as we grew, in harmony with the mushrooms on the walls.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
I Must Swiftly Cite...
Here were no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, housebreakers, attorneys, bawds, buffoons, gamesters, politicians, wits, splenetic, tedious talkers, controvertialists, ravishers, murderers, robbers, virtuosos; no leaders, or followers, of party and faction; no encouragers to vice, by seducement or examples; no dungeon, axes, gibbets, whipping-posts, or pillories; no cheating shopkeepers or mechanics; no pride, vanity, or affectation; no fops, bullies, drunkards, strolling whores, or poxes; no ranting, lewd, expensive wives; no stupid, proud pedants; no importunate, overbearing, quarrelsome, noisy, roaring, empty, conceited, swearing companions; no scoundrels raised from the dust upon the merit of their vices, or nobility thrown into it on account of their virtues; no lords, fiddlers, judges, or dancing-masters.
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