Basking

We played a rock show last night. A nice club. Full of people. They listened. Very satisfying. The greatest feeling in the world.

Still basking in the sunny glow this morning.

They tell us that a big snowstorm is coming to the city today.

Let it come down!

Love and Truth

Yes, Slumdog Millionaire really is a great movie. It's does everything a rousing, feel good movie should do. It's a fairy tale in the best sense. Danny Boyle has made an extraordinary film. The look and feel is amazing. You leave the theater thinking yes, maybe LOVE AND TRUTH can carry the day.

I believe...

We are not two we are one...

Turkey day. I avoided the bird. I ate a Turkey roast made out of mushrooms. Mushrooms?! That's right, mushrooms. It was quite good. Throw in some vegetarian gravy, a healthy dollop of mashed potatoes, some mixed vegetables and it was quite the feast. I brought over one of my favorite movies, Darjeeling Limited for the family to see.

It's one of those movies that makes me laugh, makes me cry, and makes me marvel at how good a filmmaker is Wes Anderson. It features a wonderful Kinks song called "Strangers." I do think it is a wise film. For me it is quite transcendent. I couldn't find the Kinks clip on YouTube, I guess copyright issues, but here are the lyrics to the song and a nice clip from the movie.

Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one

How Sweet it Is!

It is so sweet to see the mendacious idiots (they know who they are) swimming in their own feeble idiot-hood.

How sweet it is.

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Get right with God." - Lovely Carla

I've been listening to lots of music on my iPod. I've loaded up full discs from the Beatles, Sigur Ros, Dylan, Neil Young, Arcade Fire, Sparklehorse, Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Patti Smith, Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, Van Morrison, Dire Straits, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Flaming Lips, Santana, Bruce Springsteen, The Who, Sonic Youth, Drive By Truckers and U2.

It's weird what you pick and choose. There's something about the intimacy of iPod. It is a very different listening experience. And since it's so small, you can take it anywhere, so it's like having a constant soundtrack to my life. I'm sort of in a rambling, shambling Wes Anderson or Martin Scorcese flick.

Short on plot, heavy on character, and odd situations.

Anyway, I loaded up U2's disc "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb." It has never been one of my favorites, (seemed too poppy, too lightweight) but over time it has really grown on me. I always loved the title, and the first song, "Vertigo," is one of their great pop singles.

Now after about 15 listens or so, I've come to love the whole thing. I realize (okay I was slow on the uptake) it's "spiritual" music. Bono is usually singing about God, and although you might think that's a little pretentious, he usually does it with maximum style, grace and panache. Plus the band is superb. This is excellent, mature, richly realized music from probably the best band ever to emerge from the Emerald Isle.

The music is uplifting, exhilarating...a strange feeling is creeping over me...

Pure Madness

I do think our global financial system is pure madness. It wasn't totally apparent for a long time. There were hints along the way. Then it started to become clear that money was being created out of thin air.

And one day everyone woke up and realized that air really wasn't the best collateral. And some bills finally do come due.

How much of our wealth has been built on an airy fiction? Trillions and trillions. Weird.

It's also clear that our way of life, especially here in America is totally unsustainable. Our planet can't survive it. Or at least all the living things on the planet can't survive it.

And now it's just so strange to watch the scrambling going on. Trying to re-inflate the balloon. The more re-inflating, the more crazy it all seems.

I suppose this is an opportunity to re-make the world. I suppose...

My Humongous

I received an e-mail message this morning from Christine Dunham. I don't know Christine. Here's what she had to tell me:

Beyond question, any woman will be 100 surprised with your humongous.

Just imagine! It will be overly easy!

LUCKYBIG.COM

I Googled LUCKYBIG (I mean, hell, can you blame me - it will be overly easy!) and the first thing that came up was Strapya World. Seems Strapya World sells an amazing lucky charm called Golden Big Excrement.

"In Japan Excrement is called Unko."

Wow, there truly is an amazing world of wonders out there!

Euphoria Surfing

I've been riding waves of euphoria the last few days. It's kind of an unnatural state. How long can I stay up on the surf-board?

The ocean of our world is a churning mass. We asked for CHANGE. And it looks like we've got more change coming than we bargained for. I see this as a good thing.

I mean it's gonna be a wild ride.

What happens when we get what we've asked for? Some problems are resolved, and new ones are introduced.

This morning before coffee the Lovely Carla and I laid in bed, the morning sun streaming through the windowpane.

"Living with lies causes pain."

"Living with the truth causes pain too."

"It's a pain thing."

"Yeah."

So Bad, It's Really, Really Good!

I don't know if this makes any sense, or not, and that's okay, I'm used to it.

There seems to be some strange calculus we live by. Really bad things happen, or we lose someone or something, and then by some weird inverse calculation, we realize how precious some people and things are and this loss or defeat, leads to some kind of breakthrough, or enlightenment.

The list of really important things kind of gets smaller. And amplified.

Our experience and understanding deepens. So by losing we gain.

So sometimes the pain wakes us up from the numb zombie state that descends upon us as we navigate through the swamps of human existence.

So by this calculus bad shit can lead to good times. An accumulation of bad shit can open a door to euphoria. Dealing with real scumbags can open us to the uncommon beauty of humanity.

What a strange alchemical process. And by that calculus, it seems at this particular time and place, I have never had it so good.

Somali Pirates Hi-jacked My Imagination

'
I've been hi-jacked by Somali Pirates. I guess I'm pleased to find that there is still room for Pirates in our world. This is sort of reassuring, or maybe kind of disturbing, or unexpected, and I guess that's okay.

I first read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, when I was 10 years old. The first story I ever wrote was a Pirate story.

Then I saw the 1934 Wallace Beery flick and I thought he was a great Long John Silver. Then there was the great Errol Flynn and the equally great Basil Rathbone in Captain Blood ("Up that rigging, you monkeys! Aloft!").

Lately Johnny Depp has taken a whirl. Lots a swash, and a heck of a lot of buckling too. I mean Depp is great, but he sort of reminds me of just the most foppish member of a band like Motely Crue. Or maybe not like Motley Crue, I mean Motley Crue.

When it comes down to it, I think Wallace Beery and Basil Rathbone are my favorite Pirates. Maybe just a little grittier and supremely odd-ball characters. They didn't just act that way, they were born that way.





Here's the final duel between Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone in Captain Blood. I always rooted for Basil to somehow pull this one out. Anyway what a way to go!

Shoes...

I'm waiting for the next shoe to drop. And really, I wonder, how many shoes are there out there anyway? Can we expect a torrential downpour of shoes?

And then what? Are socks next? And then is it just a bunch of naked feet up there? Is that when we finally get Peanut Butter Jelly Time?

Shoe-less and Sock-less?

What's gonna happen next???

Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy...

It's over. That's the Trifecta.

I must remark on the passing of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was the greatest power trio in rock and roll. Slapped together by Chas Chandler. It featured the greatest rock guitarist ever hatched. He was a lefty who played his Stratocaster guitar backwards, strings reversed. He'd play the thing behind his head, with his tongue, his teeth. He made it all look so damn fluid and easy. The guitar was an extension of his being. It was his one trusted friend.

Hendrix started in the USA on the Chitlin Circuit. He honed his chops playing with Little Richard and James Brown. He was kicked out of one band after another because he'd end up upstaging the bandleaders.

Anyway, this master trickster, part Cherokee, a boundary-crosser, ventured to London and got matched up with two lilly-white Englishmen. Noel Redding on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums. With a little help, all three sported excellently improbable Afros.

The rest as they say is history. Hendrix flamed out first. Early. Redding next. And then finally, recently, Mitchell. What an amazing trio. Check this clip out. The Experience plays for German Youth in 1967. Watch the Kinders try to dance to Purple Haze.

It's almost like some psychedelic alien band touched down on planet earth to show the humans what kind of music they played in another galaxy. What a psychedelically joyous noise.

"I'm erect. Why aren't you erect?" - Show Girls

I'm probably not the target audience for the upcoming Tom Cruise flick, Valkyrie. I mean, I look at this picture of Cruise in a Nazi uniform, poofy pants and eye-patch, and after the giggles subside, I shake my head in dismay. Are you freaking kidding me? Cruise as a heroic Nazi? I don't think so.

80 million dollars? I try to imagine Cruise with a German accent. Or maybe better yet, have the whole thing in German with sub-titles. And why not have the sub-titles tell a completely different story? Kind of like that early Woody Allen movie.

I forget, did they ever decode the chicken salad recipe?!

I don't know, Hollywood is a wacky town. And maybe this ridiculously improbable thing will be some incredibly successful blockbuster. Could this be another Show Girls? Something so freakishly bad it turns out to be a shamelessly great treat?

Highly doubtful.

The Kids Who Always Colored Outside the Lines

We had a band rehearsal yesterday afternoon. It's tough giving up watching the Bear game, although it was not a good afternoon for the Bears, they got slaughtered by their long-time rivals the Green Bay Packers.

Sitting on the living room floor watching the Bear game is usually when I come up with my best guitar riffs, (there's something about all that mayhem and testosterone on the TV screen which compels me to strum my guitar aimlessly that leads to new fret-board discoveries), but we have a rock and roll show tonight, yes, that's right, a Monday night show at Reggies Music Joint.

Really looking forward to it. The big draw? $1.00 tacos and $3.00 micro-brews. Who could refuse!?

Anyway, we spent the afternoon at the Peter Jones Gallery running through our catalog of songs, and it turns out there was an art show going on out in the gallery. And there were a handful of artists (one of our favorites - Shirley Hudson) there that we hadn't seen in quite awhile. It was some kind of homecoming. Our people. Some of them we've known for 15 years or so. It's cool to see that they all are still going strong. Making art, exploring new things, keeping the flame burning bright.


These are the Strange Birds. The ones with the shiny, colorful feathers, the ones that don't really belong to any flock, except maybe the flock of no flock.

It hit me - these are the kids who always colored outside the lines.

A beautiful breed.

I Live with a Clairvoyant

The Lovely Carla has been telling me that "something is wrong" for a long time now. She pointed out to me early on that the the human way of life on the planet is "unsustainable."

She also was an early bird on the disassociation between money and any underlying reality. She works in the world of advertising which is it's own little mirror-world, and she noticed a number of years ago that not only the money kind of clouded everything, but the money and the reality of the world diverged. Completely.

And then this phenomenon flowered on a global scale. And then, remarkably, amazingly, the world kind of hiccuped and suddenly everyone realized the whole thing was a lie, a sham, a swindle, a boondoggle.

Presto Chango! Once belief is gone, the game is done.

I'm thinking we're in the "game is done" phase. What happens next is anyone's guess. But I figure putting the game back together is not in the cards.

This article in the New Yorker kind of examines the whole money phenomenon. The Money Went Post-Modern! And it turns out Jaques Derrida really is a Sage, or Magus.

We have entered the world of Simulcrum - the mirror world. But the mirror is cracked and reality has started bleeding back into the picture. Everything we know is wrong.

So now it's back to reality in a big way. What happnes next? Suddenly my personal Clairvoyant isn't seeing so clearly. I guess it's Back to the Mattresses! Or else we Sleep with the Fishes!

Beer Nuts and Foot Rubs

I know I should probably just let Bush go. But he is still the President. Oh Fuck.

Here is our fear-based leader on the free market: "The crisis was not a failure of the free-market system, and the answer is not to try to reinvent that system."

So knowing everything we know, it's safe to say: The crisis is a failure of the free-market system, and the answer is to try to reinvent that system.

That was easy. Take whatever the man says and assume the opposite!

Bush added: "Free market capitalism is far more than an economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility, the highway to the American Dream."

So that means: Free market capitalism is only an economic theory. It destroys social mobility and leads to a dead end. Kiss the American Dream Goodbye.

Bush is host to the economic summit. That's the summit where all the King's horses and all the King's men try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I'm thinking that egg is beyond repair.

We need to lay a new egg.

Thankfully, as the Biggest Lame Duck ever hatched, Bush will now be providing beer nuts and foot rubs. According to one of the economic advisors: Bush will be "providing the snacks and making sure everyone is comfortable..."

Bush has finally found his calling.

sanjay, providing the steady and swinging, many-handed, shiva-like beat on drums.

I must sing the praises of our drummer Sanjay. I've called him a many-handed Shiva, and really it's no lie. Our band is so lucky to have such an amazing force behind the drum kit. We've been on many multi-band bills and inevitably the drummers from the other bands come to pay homage to our drummer. He is that good.

Sanjay has heard so many compliments over the years, I don't think he really hears them anymore. He just plays. He loves to play. He trained as a jazz drummer, played in that esoteric world for many years. And then he kicked open the door to a much more expansive view of music. Technique is one thing, spirit is another.

He is open-hearted, open-minded. Intensely creative.

The best is when I look back at him to see him in "the zone." Eyes closed, locked in that sacred space, a slight smile fluttering across his face. It seems he hears and sees everything. He gets lost in the music, and he loses nothing.

All to the benefit of our band WhiteWolfSonicPrincess. I'm continually amazed this incredible musician continues to play in our band. It's a great validator for what we do.

I posted a few live cuts from our show last Wednesday (Magnificent Bird, and Lady in the Sand). If you get a chance, check them out. They are a little rough, we hadn't played them out in public before, (the guitar and drums were so loud on stage, the Lovely Carla and I couldn't hear ourselves singing) but I think we captured a new spirit and direction for the band.

Just listen to the drums.

"If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with women..." - M. K. Gandi

Wednesday night. It's drizzling, it's dark, I'm on my way to the city. I get a text message from the Lovely Carla, "I'm getting nervous."

Yes, as we like to say, (as per Laurel and Hardy, or I guess maybe not), "Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten me into."

Our band (minus one, our bass player Sara is out of town), played at the Elbo Room last night. We were one one of four bands on the bill as part of benefit for Apna Ghar a woman's domestic violence shelter.

There's nothing better than expending your creative juices for a good cause. Of course, we challenged ourselves. We debuted a bunch of new music we've just written, never yet played out in public.

Our set went pretty good. I've got the cd to prove it. I might post some live tracks. We'll see.

And the benefit was a great success. A great turn-out. One of the biggest crowds we've ever played for, and they raised a boat-load of money for the cause.

Positive feelings all around. There are some really amazing people in the world. Working together, we can do wonderful things.

WTF Duck?!

Bush - Lame Duck. Doesn't quite do the man justice. How about Pathetically Lame Duck? Really, Really, Really Lame Duck? Get Your Ass Out of Dodge Lame Duck?

And what kind of Duck was he in his prime? Power Mad Duck? Total Incompetent Duck? Everything He Touches Turns to Shit Duck? What the Fuck Duck?

Enlightenment is a State Located Just North of Hysteria, Southwest of Catatonia

# One

Judge Candy Extracts a Rail-Spike from His Head...

Judge Candy remembered pulling out the enormous rail-spike that had been lodged discretely in his frontal cortex. It was not a normal rail-spike. It was greatly over-sized, gigantic; it must have come from the Giant's Railway Yard. The rail-spike was the color of obsidian even though obsidian was not a color, but a type of glass, a mineraloid.

There were spatters of blood, some mucous-type stuff, and what looked like happy smiling sea urchins sliding out the brain cavity at the pulling of the spike. The urchins quickly scurried under the fat, stubbly, unsmiling couch and Judge Candy wasn't sure there had been any sea urchins or not. The blood and mucous were suspect too. The major-league divot the spike had left in his cranium filled in like a bowl of pudding swallowing a bullet.

Rail-spike. What rail-spike?

This all happened (the discovering and pulling of the spike) in the moment of the lifting of the darkness. There was an age; Judge Candy lived in this age, and it was dark. And then said age was over, or maybe "overing," or at least lightening. It was in the faint glimmering, the sputtering re-ignition of the light that Judge Candy noticed there was an enormous rail-spike protruding from his head. He skulled the mirror and the mirror skulled him back. To say he was surprised would be an understatement. Judge Candy was literally Gob-Smacked. Which was not a common event in his vague existence, but then again, he had been Gob-smacked in the past too. Judge Candy would have said "the distant past," because to him everything seemed distant, even the present moment, the least-est, latest, Breath Moment.

So yes, Judge Candy was Gob-smacked to find that there was a rail-spike on (or better yet, embedded in) his person that needed extruding (that is until he extruded it). And Gob-smacked that there was light again. He did not think these things were possible. Judge Candy remembered how the light slowly ebbed away. It did not happen overnight, although, night would have been a good time to institute the darkness. It would have been just an elongation, a persistent continuation of the absence of light. And who would have noticed? Who would have protested?

The light was just a bulb and the bulb just got weaker and dimmer and weaker and dimmer. But it was such a slow process it wasn't really noticeable, even though Judge Candy thought he was quite the sharp cookie. In this case, the Sharp Cookie was crumbling around the edges, there were crumbs in his hair, on his shoes, and tracked into the Oriental carpet in his living room. Still it was amazing how much a person (in this case Judge Candy), could really get done (swab the deck, re-arrange the pots and pans, re-calibrate the Venetian blinds) without the assistance of light.

So the dark lifted, (just a little), the bulb throbbed with new life. He couldn't pinpoint the moment, pinpointing moments was one of those existential tasks that Judge Candy took to like a fish to water, but really it was a task much like trying to tack a cloud into place. No matter the technique, the clouds always moved on unimpeded and all he was ever left with was a mouthful of tacks.

The clouds had their own ideas. Bigger ideas than Judge Candy was willing to birth. So there were no clouds stitched to any of the walls or ceiling of his apartment, but lots and lots of tacks - some firmly inserted in mouth and some not (these stragglers were strewn about willy-nilly). That was the kind of Cloud-Tacker Judge Candy turned out to be - sloppy, inept, all over the place. Always surrounded by sharp, dangerous objects. No pinpointing the moment. It was a great source of frustration for him. Made him want to make toast, by the loaf.

And what of the rail-spike? Judge Candy flung it across the room, he saw himself in short pants, throwing it like a javelin, throwing it a great distance, an Olympic-proportion distance, and it hit the far wall point first, (talk about pinpoint accuracy!), and stuck fast. It quivered like a dying animal, the spike had deeply wounded the blank, uncaring wall, and it seemed to find some pleasure in that, it was some kind of freak, a decadent, a DeSadish rail-spike. Obsidian.

Judge Candy mumbled the words, "Good riddance." And even before the words hit the surface, a great pool of loneliness welled up in his chest like a big percolating glop of lava. He knew this lava, was friends with it. But it was a friendship that only increased his loneliness; it was always a multiplier never a subtracting factor in the loneliness equation.

Lava.