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 |   The catch-all for items related to and/or inspired by the music that shaped me. |
Music has played a role in nearly every situation of my life. This is where I'll be collecting items inspired by those moments- poems, lyrics, blog entries- the soundtrack of me.  I may also contribute blog-style entries here from time to time:
And this month, I've decided to take part in... ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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Congratulations on winning the 2017 Quill Award for Best Music for [Link To Item #2072393] . *^*Delight*^* See [Link To Item #quills] for more information.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quill_Award-1375927_6.gif)    Best Blog |
** Image ID #2076190 Unavailable **   "What are you looking forward to?"What's up you guys? Double-banger today, as I try to finagle a "Invalid Item"  entry along with a "Blogging Circle of Friends " prompt...and in my haste of settling on one, I realized the basis for doing the other was totally wrong because I saw #NationalNappingDay trending on Twitter and instantly mistook that for Prosperous Snow celebrating  's prompt  . That's on me y'all...for gettin' too far ahead of myself in this on a day when I wasn't planning on exerting my blog-stench muscle(s)  . The whole idea of me doing this came together when a Gord Downie tribute account on Twitter posted a screenshot of the singer kicked back on the lake, napping with a book. After reading the thread, I learned the pic came from the video for "Chancellor", off his first solo album. Initial pressings of that album were accompanied by a poetry book bearing the same title, Coke Machine Glow ...and I honestly don't remember seeing the video before (although I may have): sometimes his solo work outside The Tragically Hip is harder to track down on YouTube. The book not only contains the lyrics to the songs on the album, but also a body of work that blows open the idea of "Canadian Rock Singer" into something more personal and diverse than his previous works suggested...it laid the foundation for him later being nominated for high Canadian honors and consideration for Ontario's Poet Laureate award being named after him (and yes, I'm confusing details and too lazy to look up actual citations. but these are real things you can also look up as per your own interests...I'm an unpaid blogger, not a journalist  ). Anyway, while there aren't many obvious love songs in Das Hips catalogue, Gord's solo work definitely contains a few with slightly less-veiled references...and really, writing a decent love poem nowadays (in my opinion) involves quite a bit of veils (not the matrimonial kind) and finding the right balance of obscurity in the metaphors (but not too much, because no one gets all the inside jokes that might go into the meat of the wordplay). The music accompanying the words is also a stark contrast...your basic blues-rock band that doesn't often steer too far from the middle of the road, versus tamer (and often acoustic) settings scaled back with the gentlest of sometimes awkward touches. "Chancellor" -Gordon Downie"I'm discovering uses for you I thought I'd never find. I could've made chancellor without you on my mind." Are there better songs on the album (and better poems in the book)? Sure, but don't ask me about them right now...this is what I came here for today, so this is what you're getting . Again, Google .I knew I liked the slow, smooth mellowness when I first heard this, and probably had thoughts on the lyrics too...but that was practically a generation ago. I do, however, remember walking to one of the local grocery stores last spring after coming home from a week of cleaning out my brother's bedroom- where he'd had hidden away approximately half of my cd collection (including all my Hip/Gord discs) out of spite for grabbing as much of my shit as he could from the house my ex and I shared- and this song came on the trusty ol' iPod for the first time. I should've been pissed that he lied to me when I'd asked him if he was sure my cds were gone, but no...caught up in the wave of way too many other things still in processing, I focused in on rediscovering what I thought might've been lost forever. At a first glance or listen, the lyrics might lead you to the sacrifices (no matter how big or small) we make for others, especially those we're in the tightest quarters with physically and/or emotionally. I mean, I could probably annotate this song (and many of Gord's lyrics) with personal anecdotes that don't, in his words, "serve the song" . And the word "sacrifice" itself seems so...holy, or something; wholly ghostly maybe, or some other batch of words I don't feel like rearranging right now. Seconds from pajamas I must First open all the doors and the windows And invite the vampire in to be one of us Then in the guise of cool air In the softer hours he's there Sitting talking in the voice of your mother About leaving one good party for another And the night of a thousand missteps And the loss that made him dogged Or it could have been the doggedness That caused the loss in the first place I guess I'm discovering uses for you I thought I'd never find I could've made chancellor without you on my mind Crazy daisies and wooden stars The threat of oxygen on Mars Marching armies in the night Smiling strangers riding by on bikes Children smoking, sloganeers on mics Just a few things most vampires don't like I'm discovering uses for you I thought I'd never find I could've made chancellor without you on my mind Before the dawning's first light I must First close up all the doors and the windows And try to trap that cool air in to be one with us I'm discovering uses for you I thought I'd never find I could've made chancellor without you on my mind But in repeated readings, you see things in yourself and in others that get lost in the idea of sacrificing. Sure, there's the idea of "someone else keeping you from being something you could've been, but you're ok with that because the greater goal together is bigger than your grand plans" and in some respects that's pretty sweet and romantic. Deeper in though, especially the second verse, you're confronted with the reality of everything you're letting in when one door closes and another opens. People like to call that "opportunity" in their favorite workspeak jargon, but no one ever really talks about the downside of what's behind that new door when one's been slammed behind you. In fact, no one talks about what kinds of houses all these doors are opening and closing on people are like...which is bullshit, and people need to stop talking about other peoples' houses in such general, garbage terms . For about two or three months before my brother died, I'd been taking some online classes through the local career center. They were boring but it was alright, and I was disciplined enough to complete some Office Management requirements, but the process wasn't going to get me as far as completing it in part because the local liaison for the program loved to pretend she gave a shit about my concerns. Still, I was rollin' right along until we lost Doug. After coming back from my mom's and getting resettled for a bit before going back for Christmas, it was just hard recapturing my discipline and dedication to the courses. My ability to pay attention had waned, drastically. There was no focus left...and with that went my ability to pursue a renewal of the software license I had once it expired, without the help of the same liaison between the employment center and the software company. She wasn't easy to deal with...in part because her job involves setting people up for this program- that the center pays for- who wind up ditching. I tried to keep in touch with her, but it wasn't enough. I got my dates wrong and had to rely on her, even after getting her word that I'd been doing so well from the get-go. I thought she had my back and became more understanding than she was, but that's on me for trusting her...although what was I supposed to say? In retrospect I should've advocated for myself better and been up-front with why I'd missed classes and deadlines...but I also didn't want that to be dismissed, as if I were searching for any ol' excuse this lady had likely heard a boatload of times already (making her job and therefore her own miserable-ass self more miserable in the process). I tried, but it was some "too little, too late" shit on my end (thanks, anxiety  ). Now I've got a flash drive full of class completion certificates for a program most employers are probably gonna stare at me like "You made this shit up, didn't you?" and then I'll have to tell them that I proudly did not because I'm not that computer-programmingly gifted and also because I couldn't handle my second attempt at college when I was like 40 and from there, well, you can imagine all the maniacal spaghetti meltdowns your fork could go into and spin and turn and yank up from there. What a fucking mess of a left turn this entry took, huh.. Wasn't even gonna mention my brother. Or my little-known third collegiate failure (my second was kinda a big deal especially to me, but that's around the time Cinn  and Charlie ~  both went back, and when I bottomed out from that I kept expectations for the third time level next to nothing). Guess it's these kinds of things that pop up in my mind when I'm planning trips back home...and a WDC Mod gives you a nonsensical review (legit thing...no names or titles mentioned but if I'm not mistaken I believe Cinn ...you had a row with her awhile back too and it baffles me how some people...never mind...I'll catch up with you about it later probably, cuz goin' at it here isn't my style). But that's the vampire of life, isn't it (getting back to the original point of this entry, finally...the fucking song )? Eventually you've gotta let things out to let others in, and vice/versa. Take the hard truths along with the misconceptions. Know that sacrifices aren't a one-sided proposition...which is something I still struggle with, from both sides. And sometimes, when the light clicks on you just gotta open up and roll with it . Especially when you don't have a plan. 'Cept now it's too late to look forward to the nap I originally planned on taking as my response to the "Blogging Circle of Friends " prompt...and that's gonna mess me up in other ways cuz now I don't feel like cooking or eating either, which means the even lesser-thought-thru plan of waiting for the cds I bought as part of Kit of House Lannister  's birthday gift to come in so I can send them off (which is more  "inside info" that should stay between us, but here I am, saying nothing by saying...nothing) is my answer to what I'm waiting for, since I'm no longer requesting of myself a nap and will probably wake up at stupid o'clock again tomorrow because time changes change everything . Thanks for putting up with me today! I've had a day besides all this wordiage, so it's great you came. Hope all y'all are swell...peace, it could have been the doggedness, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!   |
** Image ID #2076190 Unavailable ** Hey friends! Well, I've sufficiently been inspired enough to convince myself that today's as good as any to add another poem to my "Invalid Item" experience this year  ...and although I haven't looked back into past entries for today's selection, I know I've talked about this guy before in some way or another, so I'mma do it again. I don't remember if I'm allowed to say this or not, but a few years ago after going on a Saul Williams-related diatribe in another blog, my wonderful friend Lyn's a sly fox  sent me a few of his books that I no longer owned because life. And I'm happy to say that today I went into the closet with all the books on the shelves (y'all really have no idea how amazing the closet space is in this apartment ), pulled out his books, and started flippin' through 'em...'til I remembered this one fact about his work: he doesn't title his fucking poems. Nope. They're a graphic designer's dream I guess (especially , said the shotgun to the head , which was my introduction to him during my first stint at Waldenbooks in part because the shape of the book made it stand out from all the others in their poorly-themed and [and stocked] Literature section). The books themselves use little symbols or pictures to break up separate pieces, but they're largely without any other identification...making them read more like novels and forcing you to study the individual concepts as part of a greater whole.And here's me, bored with the idea of reading right now ...I settled on She (another graphic artist's dream, in title alone: it's basically S -square root symbol- HE, and the site I use that has all the ALT-key codes indexed doesn't have one for "square root"...furthering my hypothesis that mathematics shouldn't be that big a part of poetry anyway ). I fanned open the book, flipping the opposite side of the spine through my fingers like I was shuffling a deck of cards, and wound up on the same page of the poem printed on the back cover...i presented my feminine side with flowers she cut the stems and placed them gently down my throat and these tu lips might soon eclipse your brightest hopes Even without the context of the poetry leading up to or following this bit, there's a lot going on in these nine scant, precise lines. Every woman likes flowers, until you meet one who doesn't (and suspects you did something wrong upon receiving them, rather than appreciating a nice romantic gesture from out of nowhere). Women like sensitive men...until you date one who doesn't understand why certain songs can make you cry. And everyone involved in a relationship wants the same good things from that unification...but then roles become more defined, and attitudes develop and change with circumstances, and reality overtakes and diminishes the aura of happiness in favor of but now this. Without question. And you know this, man ...because it's happened to every one of all y'all muhfuggahs in one way or another, from both perspectives (the flower-giver, and the flower-eater). People say things like "Most relationships fail because of arguments over money" or "You need to have the same backgrounds for things to work" and I say that's all bullshit (but what do I know man...my life's roadmap is dotted with questionable relationships attempted and failed). I think power is an often overlooked and definitely underrated cause of failure, because too many people value it for some sort of unrelated validation. Showing someone something that can be mistaken as or perceived as weakness can get you eaten up alive, especially if the other person is coming at you from a position of "I need to make this work for me" before saying "We need to make this work for both of us". Might sound like some lame-ass bullshit Dr. Phil routine, but you know it's true, especially if it's happened to you (and maybe to a lesser extent if you're a narcissistic twat-waffle playin' cuz she don't get played...annnnnd I'mma reel this back in before my entry turns into an episode of Jerry Springer ). Anyway, back to Saul Williams...his books are captivating. If there's such a category in all of literature as "poetic page-turners that you can't wait to see how they end, just like novels, but it's poems!  " then he's the god damn President/Prime Minister/Poet Laureate of that country. There's a lot of good poetry out there, and a lot that doesn't rely on tropes of love and heartbreak and loss and recovery to tell you about those same things. If I'm being honest, he made writing fun for me again after one of the many lulls (you and) I have been through. His non-traditional books shook up my ideas of what it meant to be published; the presentation was far different than the stale, institutionalized form that smells like decrepit library books past the due dates last stamped on the insides from 1973. And of the more recent poets I've read, it kinda sucks that they haven't done more of what he did as far as design goes, but...indie poets need backing and have to bend (usually to colleges who put them on some kind of mentor nonsense), while Williams was an old Def Poetry Jam vet who worked his talent into having more resources at his disposal for publishing purposes and parlayed some fame into bigger projects. Basically, check him out. If you're as dismayed by the stereotypes you attract, inhabit, encourage, and display, as I am, you'll find he's pumping new life into you from a different angle.   "The Sunday News! This week, Martin Shkreli cried in court as he was sentenced to seven years in prison for his part in federal fraud charges. You may know him as the smug Pharma-bro with the punchable face who jacked up the price of a life-saving HIV medicine from $13.50 a pill to $750; I prefer to remember him as the douchebag who made a mockery of his purchasing the single copy in existence of the Wu-Tang Clan's album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin (there's still time to save us, Bill Murray!! ). So this week, my question is "Why should we feel sorry for this guy?", along with "Why are people with access to hedge funds controlling our pharmaceutical industry...instead of, ya know, like, doctors?""BAHAHAHAHAHA nope. I do not feel bad for this asshole one bit. I try not to let my personal feelings intrude upon the 30DBC prompts I send out too often, but sometimes it's hard not to. And really, I'm sorry to have to say this, but if you think he deserves an ounce of compassion then maybe you're reading the wrong blog and kinda maybe go rot in his jail cell with him. Pisses me off that he didn't go to jail for raising the costs of a pill that is meant to be a part of giving people who are suffering from an incurable disease a better life, but that he misled investors...basically, he fucked old rich white dudes outta money and that's why he got stuck with seven years, while the sick and poor they all profited off of got dicked hard into the fire. Who needs a Hippocratic Oath anyway when it's the banks and insurers and shady-ass investors deciding on who gets to live or die? I'm not one to wish death or harm upon anyone (I believe strongly against it, actually), but I hope this asshole gets gang-raped in jail and they can't figure out who gave him any number of infections and STDs. To paraphrase multiple Twitter commentariats on the topic over the last coupla days, I hope someone bottles his tears and tries to sell them at a 5000% markup. Dunno what they'd be good for, because they won't cure AIDS. Or prison overpopulation. Or the healthcare industry. Gambling is fun, I guess...for those who're into it. Wanna try your casino hands at the stock market? Sure...good luck homie. But the marriage of corporations and health is just flat-fuck wrong, yo. You're gambling on people getting sick and dying (or barely keeping them alive) just to make money in the long run. I don't think you need me to tell you how sick and twisted that is. Sure, doctors and nurses need patients to have jobs, but it's not like people are gonna stop getting sick or hurting themselves. No matter how many times you ram into someone's brain activity all the various thinkpieces around "Don't drink and drive!", "See this dying smoker's lungs!", or "Fast food is bad for you...like, really bad!" , people are gonna do whatever the fuck they wanna do. Sorry...had to go piss out a beer and have a smoke while memorializing all the healthy people I knew who've died unexpectedly from heart attacks and cancer and car accidents. Where was I?  Yeah, investing in businesses that may or may not last is one thing. Turning quality healthcare into a roulette table isn't cool or funny or, like, a good look...even if your brand is basically you just being a dick. Search Martin Shkreli on YouYube, and then watch any of Ghostface Killah's videos responding to his bullshit...be it the price of HIV pills or the mysterious single-copy $2 million Wu-tang album. Don't tell me Martin doesn't look like someone you'd punch in the face after about 20 seconds of conversation...I don't think you even need to hear him speak to make that judgement. I do not feel sorry for him at all. And I'm not in the business of telling people what to think or holding their views against them, but if you have any shred of forgiveness toward him, I'm gonna hafta feel a lotta shame toward you and for all the right reasons. If you're in an industry that relies on making life harder for people who cannot afford quality medication, you should promptly get fucked. Don't try to moralize money with me, and don't bring up right-wing hypocrisy nonsense either...summa y'all dorks with that noise will trip over your own dicks defending some pretty crazy bullshit in the name of nothing that'll stand for you or matters to you when your own life matters. You need to learn how to play for different teams in different sports during the proper seasons, and that's all I'm gonna say about that besides ...something I knew I wanted to add but got distracted and now can't remember .  It's Sunday, which means it's a good enough time for me to share another Saul Williams project here with you that I've prolly copy/pasted a buncha times before...from the album he put out with Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails, as the producer) is this gritty and slightly bombastic U2 cover, complete with a spoken-word interpretation at the end. The visuals can be stark and antagonistic at times (but isn't that the point of poetry?), and when you wonder why a lot of great poets your mind likes don't read in public often or record themselves, you have to consider if it's because things like this make them think they're not as capable. Hell, I already know half the time saying out loud some of the things I write is almost impossible . And "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is a pretty easy read anyway...but if I were to cop a similar demeanor on top of that? Bitch please, I'mma amateur  . Some notes while waiting for the weekend to end, ushering in the arrival of cool new things, and...oh wait:  Smaller local banks are cool for many reasons, but they can eat shit when they lock your debit card down from online purchases. I'm appreciative of "Fraud Protection" measures, but sometimes they're really ridiculous about that. Do I need some restraint? Perhaps...but I also don't need iTunes telling me after x-amount of dollars spent my business is no longer welcome there unless I use some kind of "better than shopping from the comfort of your home" money, which is why I thought I had a debit card to being with! But what do I know? I haven't actually had money to spend on randomness in like almost a decade. Can't win for losin', or something someone said that I may have misheard once or several times and misunderstood, because people are dumb.  Really great that I could finally afford to buy an actual pair of sneakers I wanted for the first time in six years that wasn't a birthday gift I settled on because my neediness got the best of me, but fuck me for wanting black shoelaces for my Adidas Superstars and making me go to Walmart to get them because no one sells flat black laces anymore. It's easy to bitch about things and claim life is "criminal" because you can't get what you want when you want it, but if FedEx can show up at my door at 9pm-ish on a Saturday then I shouldn't hafta go across town for some fucking shoelaces that I will spend more on in bus fare than the actual laces them-fucking-selves, for real.  And finally, as a result of my negligence regarding "Note: New stuff!
So...MB CHALLENGE TIME!!
[Image...", I've decided to enter "Abandoned By Myself" into this round of "Shadows and Light Poetry Contest" . It's not what I would've entered, but had I paid attention to the rules I might not have needed to crowdsource a decision anyway. Oh who the fuck am I kidding? I still might've done it, but at least maybe I'd have come up with a different answer . Alright you people- all of you- I have food to make and a nap to take and I'm done with this and you for a little while . Come for the poem, stay for the music, get slammed on the head with a political-ish opinion on your welcome way out...I think that's how this works. I dunno...the blogging landscape is volatile and always changing and what works one day doesn't work five years later when you decide to reconnect . Time to for realsies go figure out what to fatten my carcass padding up with...peace, how long must we sing this song, and GOODNIGHT NOW!! |
** Image ID #2076190 Unavailable ** 'Sup yo? Back for another foray into "Invalid Item" , in part because I enjoyed the experience of writing the last entry but also because I wanted to reread some Richard Brautigan and well...here we are. But first, some background (even though I've probably already talked about this/him several times before). Between 1997 and 2002 I was gainfully employed by a local electronics retailer based in Western NY, Stereo Advantage . I cycled through various positions at the company in general and at one point was banished to the Video department of the flagship location due in part to some sketchy behavior (undeservedly) attributed to me which also coincided with me having the nerve to actually want to use my vacation time during a slow month so I could move into a new apartment. But that's another story for another time, I guess. During my time at the now-shuttered 5195 Main St. store, I got to know and become friends with a lot of the staff...prior to that, as a co-manager of one of the area mall stores, I was only required to be there for one shift and one meeting (maybe two) a week, so I didn't really have much pull in the building until I moved over to there full-time. For some reason, being a regular part of the staff at 5195 usually carried more weight everywhere than being a manager of one of the offshoots. But whatever. One of the guys I got to know well was Bink. He was the brother of the manager and ran the Audio department...and on the side he was a drummer in a local band. When I slid over to my demotion/not-demotion at 5195, we'd hang out sometimes. When I needed a ride to work, he'd swing by on his way if we were working the same day. And if we closed the store on the same nights, sometimes we'd head out for beers if he wasn't playin' a show. We'd go to this little local mainstay down the street, Loughran's , and bullshit about the company while playing the jukebox and gettin' sauced. While still dressed in our company attire, usually ...cuz when you work for The Advantage, you're basically gold in those parts. And so in the course of one of our many conversations, it came out that I wrote poetry. He asked me who I'd read, and at that point the list was very small. I was maybe 25 or 26 by then, but hadn't accumulated enough knowledge outside of my own works to speak of besides the basics that most everyone who writes has read by then...Kerouac, Poe, whatever nonsense junior high crammed down your throat, etc. He suggested Brautigan to me and showed up the next day with...somethin', but I don't remember what. Might've been his copy of Trout Fishing in America/The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster/In Watermelon Sugar ...or something else, but that's what sticks and maybe that's because I owned a copy of it as my first real Brautigan purchase. While In Watermelon Sugar remains my favorite Brautigan read (and easily an all-time story fave), The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster sits between the two in sequence as a poetry collection, and in this version it opens with "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" . All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms. I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace. For being basically a bitter, womanizing drunk-turned-hermit more or less, he was ahead of his time. Not in the way he turned plain stuff into fantastical re-imaginings. Not because he invented some crazy form of poetry or adhered to certain values in the name of something sacred. Not because his curiosity turned him into something of a strange-famous hybrid. The Pill was published in 1968...computers were still in a prolonged infancy, and the connectivity we've come to associate with them wasn't even a slobber-drop of dollar signs in the eyes of a Jobs, Gates, or Zuckerberg yet. Like, yo...Brautigan called it here (and if you need further proof, one read of In Watermelon Sugar is all you need to convince you, being that it revolves around a place known as iDeath...long before there was an i-anything). The self-deprecating optimism is trademark Brautigan, evident in most of his work in one way or another. He doesn't take himself too seriously, but he knows he's gotta be on to something here. Whatever the reasons the internet as we know it as was created for- and in part it was meant to resemble something like his description, at its basics- it's a true shame he wasn't around long enough to witness the rise of online dating, cat gifs, and porn websites. As traveled as he was, he woulda loved that shit. And I would also be interested to know his thoughts on all of it...or what a 21st Century Brautigan has in his/her omniscient mind for the 22nd. Hey, if you can wonder what so-and-so or such-and-such in your hero world of choice would do in this day and age as opposed to the setting they were scripted into, it's fair to let me have this. Let me have this!!   “'It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!' -Friedrich Nietzsche. Are you always aware of the reasons for your opinions and the way you think? And what do you make of Nietzche’s quote?"I will readily admit that there are times when my opinion on something overshadows the very reason why I formed it...but I also think that's natural. Opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one over time turn into our own little facts...the very facts that make us who we are. And sometimes those opinions were forged from facts...hopefully. Debunking a childhood myth isn't a great experience, for example. It can leave you cold and untrusting for awhile, but you've lived your life for so long believing something and living a certain way because of an opinion that it's become your truth...be it about you or pertaining to your personal history, or Santa Claus, or speculation over whether or not a fictional character in something written hundreds of years ago is gay. And some are easy to move on from with new knowledge in the back pocket, while other times it shakes you to a death of sorts in the core of who you were up to now. I have opinions, because I'm like a grown-up age. These are facts. And I try to base my opinions on facts, because that is crucial currency when it comes to things like personal integrity and another thing I can't think of the word for but there's a word I wanted to use, believe me. Guess that's the thing I'll wake up to well before I'm sposta tomorrow morning . Truth is, most times the convictions (hold up...that might've been the word ) giving birth to the opinions almost always become long-forgotten in the grand schemes of our histories. We may know why we hate wearing the color red, but do we really remember the terrible red ensemble we put together that in retrospect never should've been on any store's hangers let alone our bodies? Hellllll nawwwww man. Sometimes we just need to block out the horror, and after awhile it's so ingrained in our inner being that we're like "Nope, can't, cuz it's red...but why don't I like red again?"  Nietzsche is alright with me, if only because I see his name and think of an old football player of the same last name, and anyone who says that name like "Nee-chee" and not "Nitch-ski" gets props, especially if I'm totally butchering it based on personal preferences. I forget what I was goin' for here...musta been sidetracked. It happens. I guess, the facts that wreck us also shape us, and it's good to keep them in a card catalog of sorts that gets sniffed on occasionally. Being required to always know the whys of something I feel strongly about would send me into crippling panics, and I'm not that adult yet where I can absolutely defend stupid decisions from years past without caring about consequences or doubts. Opinions are kind of our "this is where we are right now" statements. Sometimes we care enough to school/get schooled, and change them to fit our current needs/wants/haves. Sometimes we grow out of them only to remember why we have them years later. Life moves at rates too intermittent to be held into one opinion for so long, especially when you're finding yourself on the wrong side of history (past or present). If you educate yourself on the opinion in question, taking into account information from sources who won't always tell you just what you wanna hear, you'll be alright in the end...when you've got the credible info (fuck...that might also have been the word I was looking for earlier in this entry ) and you can stand behind it against the lesser-informed, who use their opinions as a shield against the reality, what's there to worry about? That's less fear you're sleeping in, amirite?To tie this entry into a big fat bow, Bink also got me somewhat into The Flaming Lips (part of working for The Advantage was that we all had nicknames; mine was Bert because it was short for my full name and apparently much cooler than my real name). He threw some songs at me and while I'd already known they were interesting in a way, I just never had anything else to go by (again, back in the prehistoric Internet ages). "All We Have Is Now" -The Flaming Lips"As logic stands, you couldn't meet a man who's from the future. But logic broke; as he appeared, he spoke about the future. 'We're not going to make it;' he explained how the end will come, 'you and me were never meant to be part of the future.'" It's habit for me to think of Bink when I do anything Brautigan or Flaming Lips. Like, that's my center in those Venn Diagram circles. Great guy and one of a few I truly love and miss from that era of my life. While wondering why a bus can smell so amazing and disturbing at the same time...  I know this is only of importance to me, but I'm really impressed with my discipline as it pertains to only eating the food in my fridge. Specifically, not going to the Pita Gourmet in Cortland. Like, I've been dying for a gyro w/extra Feta for so long, but no...clothes and music and apartment stuff came first on my list of things to spend money on, while also being responsible about food. But my gawd I'mma need me some of that soon. Speaking of which, it's well-past dinner time here and I need to get me some...food. From my fridge. Smartly, so's I don't feel like a rock the rest of the night. Boring day otherwise, best believe that. Peace, all we've ever had was now, and GOODNIGHT NOW!! The sounds alone seem to mean we're doomed... just as nature intended. |
** Image ID #2076190 Unavailable ** What's up you guys! Welcome to, like, my annual "Invalid Item" entry . I say this not because it's something I never feel like doing; it's just that blogging takes more energy for me now than I'd care to admit, and I still don't feel totally comfortable talking about poetry (even though I've read a couple really good books in the past few months that discuss just that). Like, ask me on a whim about poems from a favorite author and I'll struggle to remember a title, let alone what I thought about it. I just don't retain information that well anymore (if I ever did, to be honest). This same logic applies to me sitting here trying to figure out which poems from same favorite poets I'd wanna share, in part because most of the personal library I'd acquired through the years never survived my transition from Buffalo to Cortland...so it's not like I can wander over to a bookshelf and crack a worn spine into its preferred position, ya dig? But I wanna feel like I'm participating somewhat. At any given time I've always got a couple books out from the library...usually a poetry collection, something non-fictiony of some sort of specific personal interest, maybe a fun-looking graphic novel, and randomly a biography or fiction work that catches my eye while I'm comin' through. I've been slowly making my way into Ted Kooser's Flying At Night ...I'd remembered his name from another book I read last summer; a collection of essays written by a poetry critic for I think the New York Times, and it turns out Kooser was also once the Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress. From that same blurb on the book's back cover: he's won a shitload of awards I've never heard of (unsurprisingly) named after people I'm not aware of (same unsurprisingness), and still more people I've no clue as to who they are have spoken glowingly about this collection and of Kooser in general (totally not surprised at all...what're they sposta say? "Don't read this dipshit's nonsense!" ). So I'm probably about three-quarters through this, and so far it's pretty meh...unless you like poems about old people living out their last days in rough shape, or barns. Either I'm not reading this well enough, or I'm not that smart (very possible), or he's just not for me (very likely). He's not terrible; I'm just not relating to them very well. And sometimes he's just really simplistic...to the point that it falls flat against my dead ears screaming to see something vibrant and the dying space between them. I'm sure he had reasons for writing his poems, and how I'd react to them was the least of his concerns...until I read "A Buffalo Skull" this morning, and finally found my mind wandering inwardly because of the poem and not outwardly away from it. A Buffalo Skull No fine white bone-sheen now; a hundred hard years have worn it away, this stump washed up on a bar in the river, its horns like broken roots, its muzzle filled with sand and the thin gray breath of spider webs. Once, they covered the grasslands like the shadows of clouds, and now the river gives up just one skull, a hive of bone like a fallen wasp’s nest, heavy, empty, and full of the whine of the wind and old thunder. And I know what he's referring to really isn't what it evokes in my head upon reading it...I'm making it into something probably far too literal for my own good. But just as we often want to see what really isn't there when we read a poem or hear a song, the same can work in reverse or something. Which is probably a garbage way of me trying to analogize what I read, but you'll have that with me. Every few months when I hop on the ol' Greyhound to visit my mom, the station closest to her is in the heart of downtown Buffalo. Fields eventually turned into a one-time mid-major metropolis, if you will, that has seen various stages of decline and reconstruction of many fashions over the subsequent years. The city's highlights- the shopping centers, theater districts, entertainment options- run through their useful life cycles, sit in abandonment afterward for well past their "Serve By:" dates, and then another generation comes along to reshape the landscapes back into fruition of a different flavor. I think because I'm not seeing them as often in person anymore, it's almost easier to picture what used to be in some of the dilapidated neighborhoods than if I'd been there to watch them wither on a daily or weekly basis. Your memory can plug back in the functional past after prolonged absences, because it's not rewriting a film in real time. I'm well aware that this isn't some phenomenon that's exclusive to Buffalo or some crazy new concept. In the five-and-a-half years I've been in Cortland, their downtown district (albeit a paltry maybe five or six blocks in comparison) has undergone many changes...including the loss of several multi-generational businesses that made visiting Main St. worthwhile. And most of them are still vacant, months and years later, waiting for their rebirth. The animal is dead; long live the animal! The surrounding neighborhoods- the whine of the wind that made the distinct sections of Buffalo what they were when they served as home bases to the families that worked in the steel mills, auditoriums, and malls- remain largely untouched by the hands that served to populate and/or give life to the industries that moved on. A few blocks off the NFTA bus schedule maps in any direction from your attraction of choice probably isn't somewhere you'd care to visit unless you've been there before...the way nighttime makes even the most idyllic surroundings appear sinister to the uninitiated, and their inhabitants just stumps washed up at favorite corner bars since the fancy newfangled places uptown have priced them out with wasps' nests of greed and spider webs of local wannabe hipsters. Yet it's home, even if I don't live there anymore and it's not the same home to the people who still do...and that's where this particular Kooser poem took me more than any of his others I've read up to that point. That perhaps it's us who are the skulls, living with memories of places time has moved on from. It was early in the day for me- maybe 10am-ish- when I'd read "A Buffalo Skull" and thought to myself "Well, maybe I can pull something out of that for "Invalid Item" today. And then of course I went on to do other little things here and there and cast the notion aside...then I throw on some tunes to relax and take care of other online stuffery and this comes on and I'm like "Yeah, ok,  this all was supposed to happen then..." . "I Cut Like A Buffalo" -The Dead Weather"You should try to take it easy on me 'cause I don't know how to take it." A few personal notes while I ponder why I don't do this so much anymore and why I should...  I need to buy some GPs to fund some personal endeavors I may have spoken of around the last time we got together like this. I won my SSI appeal (the hearing was in January) and got my first payment the other day...a hell of a lot sooner than I was led to believe I would. When the struggle is real, the struggle is worth it, or something...that's how close I'll allow myself to becoming a motivational speaker as I'll get. Today . It's not an Earth-shattering amount and it won't make me rich, nor will it allow me the same level of comfort I had when I was actually employed/employable, but it's certainly a level of comfort now that I haven't had since I moved out here. Like, "buy a slice of pizza" or "buy a stick of deodorant" is not a choice one should ever have to make. But all (or most of) y'all have no idea the weight that's been lifted off these shoulders. I mean, my shoulders are still physically shitty and can't handle more weight now that there's less of it on them, but at least I was able to purchase a new hoodie for them to cover up in rather than relying on the same ol' battered-ass ones I've got (or dealing with thrift stores, and the trouble of saving up for "such a special purchase" like used fucking clothes).  Since this is an entry about a poem for submission into a poetry-sharing forum, I'm gonna suggest you guys check out Jill Bialosky's Poetry Will Save Your Life: A Memoir ...looked interesting in the library, read a few reviews on it since I was unfamiliar with her work, finally got my hands on it, and enjoyed it. She relays her life story up to now through poems she's read over the course of her life, and I'm gonna admit that I'm jealous...if only because I don't remember much more than a few percentage points' worth of pieces I've read that I could say were relative to me becoming, uhhhh, me. Let alone feel like I could publish a fucking book about it that people would read . It's good though...like poems that got you through dating in college (I never lasted in college long enough for that), or how your first two pregnancies resulted in, ummmm, not ending with kids (I am not a parent and at this point will probably never be one), or 9/11 (wrote one thing about that shortly after it happened but I was karaoke-bar hungover and it never survived early-WDC membership lapses and port-trimmings), or sibling suicide (yep, got that in spades now, thanks). Glad I checked it out, because it's definitely helped me learn a little about talking about poetry and how you feel about it can work in conversation (like I said at the top of this entry, it's not my strong suit). Not that I'm any bit more one to talk now than prior to reading her book...I'm still not the intellectual's intellectual. But ask me about early 90's Emo and I'll hold my own .  And finally...I'm tired. Wasn't prepared to write a blog entry before I started writing it, so I've got nothing more to add here other than support  your fellow writers here whether it's through on-site fundraisers or emotional struggles or just droppin' in unannounced on whatever WDC stuff they're doin' once in awhile. And I get it... yeah, it's all things I'm not good myself at doin' consistently anymore, but I do what I can when I can. I talk a lotta shit I struggle with backin' up...I'm behind on some commitments, and I don't pump tires in the newsfeed like I used to because even that takes work. But yo...some of your friends need you in the "Invalid Item" . "The Not-So-Daily Poem" can always use more of your words, along with one of my personal faves, "Shadows and Light Poetry Contest" , for you poets without boundaries. Plug and support...that's how communities work, thrive, and sometimes even function without having one person foot the bill for everyone else's enjoyment. I need to get better at doing this, and if I'm saying this then there's a chance you need to be too. Alright well, now that I'm about over food making my body feel terrible I suppose it's time to jam more food into it and see what happens. It was nice visiting you all again but unless you're gonna take your shoes off first let's not make this a habit (especially if you're gonna get all pissy about me not taking my shoes off ). Peace, can't tell when I'm jokin', and GOODNIGHT NOW!! I hope none of these people survived the Blizzard Of '85. |
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Still remember your address on Penora.
But, with extreme shit hitting me I bury under ground and neither internet nor real life can find me then.
