Bus Stop

I don't own a car.  Which means I use public transportation quite a bit. Trains and buses.  It's not a bad way to get around Chicago.  I recommend it.

I discovered this ad for Canadian Club at a bus stop.  For some reason it really resonates.  It made me laugh out loud - which is a good way to get your space at a bus stop.  

The ad is a window into an era that I vaguely remember - it's supposed to be around 1965 - no, I mean, as a kid, I remember that era vividly, I just rarely conjure up the picture.  Whoever came up with this got the details right!

This does not make me want to start drinking Canadian Club.  That kind of hard liquor just makes me go into a Linda Blair-like convulsions - spinning bed, green projectile - but this did bring me back to another time, another place - there was a generation of people living like this, an upwardly mobile business class that built the suburbs.  Those guys and gals are pretty much gone.  They laid down the gauntlet - one we never needed to pick up.  

This is just nostalgia. It's an advertising gimmick.  There ain't no going back, and drinking that rotgut will only give you a headache.  Still, this is a world I knew.  I was there - wondering what the fuck it was all about - was this really the world?

Chuck D. Tells It

The title of Public Enemy's latest release tells it all with a pithy little question addressed to all of us biding our time in the Terrordome.  Rhetorical or not, it cuts to the chase:  

"How to Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?"

ZaZen Wednesdays

Back in the old days, when I was just a little tot, there was an ad campaign for Prince spaghetti. They put forth the idea that Wednesday was Prince spaghetti day.  Not sure how many families actually adopted that idea, I know we had spaghetti frequently, but I'm not sure if it was always or ever on Wednesdays.

Lately, Wednesday has been Zen meditation day.  So yes, it was back to the black cushion and the blank wall for us.  I'm sort of getting into this pursuit, or really non-pursuit of nothingness, which as they say is the same as something-ness or maybe not.  So there really is no pursuit of anything. And that's what we seek by not seeking.  Or something like that.

Anyway, my take away from the session last night: the real world is our teacher.  Even if  reality is not real and it teaches us nothing.  Got it!

Light, Shadow and Movement - What else?

Calvin Tompkins writes about art.  I read his biography of Marcel Duchamp a number of years ago, and ever since I've appreciated his sensibility.  So I was very intrigued by his write-up of the video artist Paul Chan.

And then of course, even if you live in the hinterlands, you can find something on YouTube that gives a little glimpse of what Chan does.  I especially like the idea that the technological junk we have created somehow rises up to some higher realm, whereas the humans, well we just fall.

Death Cab for Cutie

Peter V.  drummer in the Telepaths writes about Death Cab for Cutie.  He got me interested in these guys, love their name, and I finally checked them out on YouTube.  Their new disc is Top of the Pops, so they probably don't need anymore exposure, but I think this  8 minute opus is quite good.

Trickster Makes the World Go Round

We've been working on new music.  We finally posted a new song at the WWSP site.  It's called "Tricks on the Brain."  That's Sara on bass and backup vocals, Carla wrote the lyrics and sings lead, and I play guitar and percussion.  The working title for our next digital download - Shadow of the Marigold.  We're only about 10 new songs away...

Same Old

"The same old questions.  The same old answers." - Samuel Beckett - Endgame 

Friendly Tribes

Just remember, you are not alone.  Even when you are alone.  There are the 6 tribes in your inner elbow, and 2 in your gut.  According to the Scientists, (man are they a kooky lot!),  the bacterial cells resident on and in our bodies out-number our human cells 10-1.  Without them we'd be a hell of a lot more lonely and dead too.  Without them we just couldn't digest the world.  Does that make you feel dirty - sharing life with tiny bacterial micro-organisms? It's okay -  you are dirty. That's life.

Why does Superman get up in the morning?

I just purchased my next Klosterman "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs," but I'm still digesting his Led Zeppelin inspired "IV."  According to the great Kloster Man the secret to success is not good looks, good luck, or smarts; no the key to success is having an ARCH ENEMY!  

Of course, he is absolutely right.  Think of any Superhero and the Arch Enemy looms like a shadow, the doppelganger - a dark presence who is always spurring the hero on to greater heights of Super-ness.  How many celebrities and Superstars are driven on by their unthinking tormentors from their high school days?

I think Chuck's right.  My own personal Arch Enemies (Sniveling Weasel and Big Chief Totem Pole), have spurred me on to great new successes. So I suppose a "thank you" is in order. But of course, the Arch Enemy is the last person in the world you would ever thank!  And as Dark Man likes to say - "So much to do, and so little time!"

The All Zen Channel

The last two Wednesdays we went to a Buddhist temple and did the Zen thing.  A black cushion and a blank wall.  I'm not new to meditating, but I found the Zen way difficult at first.  My half lotus was more like a full pretzel, and usually I meditate eyes closed, but the Zen way requires eyes open, turned to the wall.  Reminded me of Catholic grade school, that's what happened when you were "too excitable."

Last night, it was all so much better.  I knew the drill, found that the "Burmese style" (kneeling with cushion support) more to my liking.  The two hours sort of flew by.  Finding the stillness, the emptiness, what a strange pursuit - it's contrary to everything else we know and do.  

Then it was back home to watch the second half of the Lakers/Spurs game.  If you just saw the result in the paper this morning, nothing special, Lakers won a close game.  But if you watched the drama unfold, it was mind-blowing - the Lakers were down 20 points in the third quarter, and then Kobe Bryant emerged.  

I'm thinking in the rush of the game, in those moments of pure concentrated action, Kobe is totally there in the moment, it is a pure Zen of the highest degree.  That's why it's fascinating to watch him play.  There's the blank wall, the black cushion, and then there's Kobe Bryant floating to the basket like some Zen butterfly.  Perfect.

Appetite for Destruction?!

Blogger is acting sort of weird this morning.  Sometimes technology is not our friend.  That's kind of the story of the modern world.  The machines we have made are making hash of the natural world.  There must be a balance - but not sure if we've found it yet.  In the meantime, our sleek inventions hum along, gobbling up everything in their path.  Appetite for Destruction!

R.E.M. - Living Well's the Best Revenge

  Love those glasses Michael! First it was Arcade Fire in an elevator, now REM in a car, what next, the E Street Band in a phone booth (do they even have phone booths anymore?).

"It's Getting Heavy." - Wayne Coyne, Flaming Lips

Went to the Green Festival Saturday over on Navy Pier in Chicago.  Listened to some smart people talk about the dire straits we find ourselves in at the moment.  The planet is in crisis. Too many human beings running around the planet acting as if they own the place.  Wasn't it Sitting Bull who told us that a man can't own the land, the sky, the air, the plants and animals?

No one listened to that wise old Indian at the time.  Maybe some folks are starting to listen now. Anyway, there are glimmers of  hope.  We are clever monkeys.  Maybe self-preservation will motivate us to live more responsibly?  I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Major changes need to happen in a short amount of time.

The Lovely Carla is hoping for some great transformative consciousness that will propel us to a new era.  I like the vision, but I'm unsure of how you get from here to there.  Maybe we can somehow channel the greed, the selfishness, the ego - to trick ourselves into doing the right thing in spite of ourselves?

Anyway, it was a necessary trip.  No one man or woman is gonna solve this one.  It's gonna take a lot of really smart people to kind of carry this through, and then everyone else is gonna have to jump onboard to try to make this work.

Otherwise, I guess our legacy will be that we overran the place, trashed it, killed everything on it, and split.  Not very inspiring. 

Picture Worth a 1000 Words

Ornette Coleman.  Free Jazz.  The Quarter Tone Pitch.  Harmolodic.  Sound Grammar.  Something Else!!! Change of the Century.  The Shape of Jazz to Come.  

Maybe a Cartoon World is Better?!

Takashi Murakami has a retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum.  He lives in a cartoon world.  His work has been derided by some as representative of "infantile capitalism."  He has been influenced by Warhol's consumerism.  See also - Japanese Manga & Anime.

Anyway, I found this to be a telling detail about him:  "His mother impressed upon him that he owed his existence to the chance that the sky above her native city, Kokura was overcast on  August 9, 1945, thus diverting the B-29 to its secondary target, Nagasaki."

Pirate Mics

I play in two bands. Who doesn't? And last night I sat in with a third. My brother's wacky outfit, The Banana Street Band. They hole up over at the Flat Iron Arts Building in Wicker Park. Third floor. What a show. I plugged in my Telecaster and jammed with these guys. Talk about intensity. My brother is channeling the ghosts of Leadbelly and Allen Ginsburg, their guitar player is channeling some Polish gypsy poet from a century or two ago, and their drummer is channeling some hipster beat master from god knows where. I got to kind of ride the storm, playing lead lines around their torrent of sound. 

My brother's latest obsession is building microphones.  He's assembled these vintage parts from the 40's and 50's and made totally unique mics - he calls them Pirate Mics, (you might find one on Ebay!), they even have a skull and crossbones logo.  We all used these little crappy amps, (you could fit the lot of them in a small closet) and somehow it all sounded exactly right.  I mean this was rough, totally unpolished, pure and spontaneous, all feeling and intensity.  What a trip.  The sounds swirled around that big drafty old building conjuring ghosts and laying down some kind of sonic map.

Magician

Robert Rauschenberg cashed in his chips at 82. He and Jasper Johns defined for me what an artist was and could be. Rauschenberg did it all - sculpture, painting, photography, printmaking, performance. As someone commented - "he made something from nothing." That's magic. A great magician decamps.

8 Years Flashed Before Our Eyes!

Were they divine, were they crappy, were they otherwise? The "Bush Era" is croaking to a close. Took us all down a notch or two. At least.

Here's one pop cultural historian's take:

"In November 2000, the United States held a presidential election and nobody knew who won, so we just kind of made up an outcome and tried to act like that was normal. Less than a year later, airplanes flew into office buildings and everybody cried for two weeks. And then Enron went bankrupt and then the U.S. became a rogue state, and then The Simple Life premiered, and then gasoline became unaffordable, and then our Olympic team lost to Puerto Rico, and then we reelected the same unqualified president we never really elected in the first place. Later there would be some especially devastating hurricanes and the release of a horrible movie titled Crash." - Chuck Klosterman - April, 2006 from his collection of essays titled IV.

UPDATE: I found this via Glen Greenwald quoting G.K. Chesterton's Heretics, and, well, I don't know for some reason it seems apropos:

"It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself."

Catch the Wind

Nothing stands still. For instance, this country (if you can talk about countries as if they are one thing) isn't what it used to be. Sometimes it's hard to tell. All you see is what it was, can't quite tell what it is, and certainly don't know what it's gonna be. So there's hope and wonder and a sort of dread all mixed up in that.

So knowing what I know, and having seen what I've seen, I sometimes doubt whether things could work out as well as I sometimes conjure up. Then again, I can sometimes get carried away, and I know for sure that because some things are so bad, that change is in the air, and things could actually be so good. Destiny like a pinball game.

I have to try not to let what I know, get in the way of what is, and what could or will be.

And then what happens happens and then we all decide what happened and what it means - and already we are behind the times just trying to catch the wind.

The Chicago Blues

I grew up in Chicago Land at a time when Chicago Blues was still alive. I mean, it's alive today too. Buddy Guy is still keeping the flame going, but when I was in my late teens and early twenties most of the Chicago originators were still alive. I had a great friend, I'll call him Poppa John who was a lilly-white, red-haired, long drink of water, who was an absolute blues fanatic. He was also an amazing blues harmonica player in his own right. We used to go to clubs all over the city chasing after the blues legends. Sometimes Poppa John even got up and jammed with them too.

Some of the great blues cats we saw include: Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Hound Dog Taylor, Howling Wolf, Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, Son Seals, Carey Bell, Furry Lewis, Bukka White, James Cotton, Junior Wells. Also this guy - J.B. Hutto. I caught him at a Wise Fools show. I'll never forget him - he played an old Airline guitar, a crappy Montgomery Wards model (later made famous by Jack White of the White Stripes), he was wearing one those funny hats you see Shriners wear. He was quiet, friendly, but had a sort of other-worldly thing hanging about him.

Anyway, I thought about him this morning and well of course there's a YouTube! Unfortunately, he isn't wearing the hat.