"There are blue shadows between people, there's a comfortable forest of legs."
-from Waltzing Matilda, "My Bodyguard", by Alice Notley

I'd have to say that Zodiac is one the best "Hollywood" films I've seen in a long time. It's just so meticulous. By far the best approximation of a period I've seen in a film. As for the chemistry between Mark Ruffalo's raspy bulldog cop and Jake Gyllenhall's boy scout with whiskers, it's maybe the lone weakpoint. Gyllenhall's earnestness just ain't as fun to watch as Ruffalo's slow boil. Robert Downey Jr plays a character who's exactly what you would expect a character played by Robert Downey Jr to be like- whimsical, cranky, jokey, flippant (as in flipping bird while leaving San Fransisco Chronicle copy room etc). But he hardly phones it in, and no one else does either in a cast that includes two of my favorite character actors, Elias Koteas and Philip Baker Hall. And there's also some of the best use of music in a film I've witnessed, especially in the murder scenes that are almost as well executed as HItchcock. And that opening song is by Three Dog Night? Does that I mean like them now? Oh well.

Fatables.

Shouldn't athletes just be allowed to do whatever drugs they want?

I know the arguement get's made that they're 'role models', but these 'role models' are already multi-multi-millionares living in a country where most of their fans will soon be looking at the concept of upward mobility as a quaint notion from the past.

Yesterday I was listening to 'Range Life', and this line just hit me like a gut punch, which it always does.

'school's out, what did you expect?'

This just somehow completely encapsulates life for me. And not just cause I'm not attending school. Maybe it's that the line's preceded by:

'but I've got absolutely no one, no one but myself to blame

don't worry, we're in no hurry'

Since Malkmus is saying 'but I've got absolutely no one, no one but myself to blame', the bridge of 'don't worry, we're in no hurry/ school's out, what did you expect?' could maybe be looked at as a response, maybe even like a Greek chorus of... no, no, I won't say slackers, but people who're somewhat drifting thru life. But then there's the response-within-a-response of 'school's out, what did you expect?'

The tone of the song ultimately seems like one of exasperation, 'if I could settle down, then I would settle down'.

Does anyone else like Freaks & Geeks? Wasn't the way it ended kind of lame? I mean c'mon, a Deadhead?!?

I think the posts on this blog fall into two categories, with some exceptions of course. One category is where I attempt to write a certain kind of prose, say in the area of poetics or criticism. And the other is usually a one-sentence explanation of why for whatever reason I'm just not up for an 'attempt'. Today I guess I was up for one of those attempts.

One of the most fascinating things to me about Clark Coolidge's work is the ark of his career. It's seems like one can divide it into roughly these phases: 1) in the late 60s, the early work, radically disjunctive, sort of word nuggets that form short jigsaw narratives like in Space, 2) in the early 70s, longer endlessly recombinatory works like in Polaroid, The Maintains and to somewhat of an ebbing-back-into-narrative-mode extent, Quartz Hearts, 3) in the late 70s, the more narrative Solution Passage, Mine: The One That Enters The Stories, 4)in the 80s, serial texts like At Egypt, and The Crystal Text. But it's also evident that as the work progresses, Coolidge is able to utelize all these various modes in more of an overlapping way. This 'career-ark' mutates to somewhat of an extent. On The Nameways Vol. 2, for example, utelizes disjunction, narrative and seriality. A Collected Coolidge, tho it would probably have to more than one volume, would go a long toward putting all this into focus.

I get hogtied in self-examination. You can definitely do that too much. But then I feel as tho I've let alot of people down, including myself. So now what, do I just write more poems? I mean I'm sitting here and I have a life. You're sitting there, and you have a life. But the thought tends to go something more like, "I'm sitting here, and you're over there working." I think work is important but I can never quite trust it. Last night I watched Manufacturing Consent again, and Chomsky said something like, "I just don't think people should have to rent themselves out in order to live." And then of course the response is always, "Ha ha, well yes Mr. Chomsky but you are a little naive about the world." Tom Wolfe in his fucking dandy suit endlessly placing everything in an imaginary context, and then still having the nerve to call what someone like Chomsky says 'patent nonsense'. So what is work? And where is this all going? And why do I feel like Sarah Jessica Parker, posting questions on my blog? I suppose I am naive. My left arm hurts.

We want poems that show us how much of the world?

For some reason I really want to listen to Phil Collins right now. The library is closing.

WHOAH!!!

Looking forward to appearing, sans glasses, in this film.

Ah... AH CRAP!!

John Coletti's wikipedia page.

Something that occured to me last night:

Would humans have domesticated animals if clothes hadn't been invented?

I mean, would you feel comfortable with a kitten your lap if you were naked?

Five Simpsons episodes and leftover shrimp fried rice. Eat out your hearts workaday types, or umm are they hiring there?

Some kind of weird sinus thing here, like I just squirted water out of my nose or something.

Today as I was crossing the Locust St bridge, I saw two DPW workers standing next to a red fire hydrant vomiting yellow water from it's mouth.

Crying while dialing the phone. Crying while drinking water. Crying near a zebra. Crying while smoking. Crying while quitting smoking. Crying while looking at candy. Crying while it's raining. Crying in a barn. Crying backchannel. Crying while sleeping.

WAH WAH WAH!

WAH WAH WAH!

etc.

Crying while eating a peanut butter sandwich means.... get help?

_____


Last night Calvin Johnson moved me and 40-50 others upto, and past the point of tears. He's one of the most incredible performers I've ever seen in my life. He did a capella versions of a couple songs, interpretive dancing while singing.

_____

The Trusty Knife are also amazing to me, whatever that phrase means. After spending most of my night upto that point feeling sorry for myself and passive-aggresively interacting with others, they started in on "Long Distance Song". I'd heard it, but this time I got this burning feeling while listening to it, that I am lying to myself, that I don't even have the ability to be truthful with myself, and that in fact we're all lying to ourselves.

Time for me to write about The Tiny, which I'm in, but never mind that. This is the only magazine I can think of where in every issue I like almost every piece at least a little. And Gina Myers and Gabriella Torres hit a home run by placing John Coletti's amazing work up front:

I miss you with tomatoes

over your eyes tattoed valentines

on your trachea zippering

each of my ungainly comments

Just about every Coletti masterwork blows my head off with a nonchalant cosmic whoosh. Detail woven with sensory perception, joined to a kind of emotional pull that's stitched into it so intricately you almost feel it on a subconscious level.

it's getting dark

in masculine wilderness

American Hydrant

little high, little low

Coletti's work never shys away from apparent obscurity, but the ink-blotter feel of the poem is always a product of devotion. A reader can feel as though they're in strange territory, but it is never unfreindly territory. Obliqueness need not be a cold thing, and one can see Malkmus, Ceravolo, Dickinson etc, for further proof.

C.J. Martin's poem here does a neat job of addressing the act of making art, without seperating art from life:

BUSHEL MECHANISM -
else than mechanical draft,
if to increase the between
(touch & thing):
this means drafts, chances.

I'm very allured by passages like this, which almost combine the sensiblities of Emily Dickinson and early Clark Coolidge. And The Tiny specializes in this kind of modern lyric steez.

Also great in this issue is work by Edmund Berrigan, Joseph Massey, Brenda Iijima, Andrea Baker, Dustin Williamson, many more. The Tiny is a contender. Dig it!

I watched Wild Style for the first time last night, and yes it was good. That time period, late 70s early 80s, also presented in Style Wars among other films, was a pretty major ferment of creativity. But you probably don't need me to tell you that. Wild Style can easily be forgiven for abruptly turning into a concert film at the end, since the music is so fucking inspiring. I keep thinking, even tho alot of poets have been listening to hip hop since the start, maybe poetry hasn't fully explored the possibilities of that culture. Or maybe in some way poetry shuns them, for not wanting to seem "performancey". After that we watched Wu Tang's "comeback concert" from a few years ago, which tho very sloppy, has some of the old flava. I always saw Wu Tang as one of few cases where the feeling of it being a throwback- certain bounce to the ounce, a large crew, tag team MCing- was a good thing. I think the music's aged better than groups like Jurrasic 5 to say the least. Not to mention how the old skoolness of it was balanced out by RZA's incredibly innovative production. And there's the very sad and heartwarming recurrence of Ghostface trying to cheer up ODB, who's literally slumped down on the side of the stage for most of it.

Joe, meet me at the Tool Shed.

Open to aesthetic experiments. Any proposals?

When I get asked 'Who is your favorite poet?', I say Joseph Ceravolo.

And this one is dedicated to him.

Currently seeking employment.

Mike Hauser/Weldon Hunter
Saturday June 23 7pm
at Woodland Pattern Book Center
720 E Locust St, Milwaukee

"Hauser's manic hoo-ha has left us all a little disgusted at times... Cocksure yet demurely Al B Sure when oppurtunity knocks, he can bring home the wet t-shirts when it's crunch time. Take a ticket. Get drunk beforehand. Bring your own slide whistle."

--Rufus T. Firefly, International Player

"Since Hunter's ejection from Major League Bowling, he has shown us that one can and should go too far when pursuing sweet sweet bay marie. Where his poetry is lacking in gumption it is chockfull of the kind of lyric roughshod Welsh Corgies are awoken from nightmares by."

--Captain Jeffrey Spaulding, African Explorer

Gummi meanie.

Ga mi mi nee.

G' me, me knee.

Gimme me, knee.

G' bee bee bee.

Gum me, Mimi.

Gun pee me, me.

Gumbie me Mimi, me.

Gun pee please meme.

Guppy please me, meme.

G' bye Mimi.

Love Gary Busey.

Song confessions:

Santana " The Game of Love"

Ok. If you said, "Dude that song sucks!" I might be inclined to agree with you, in any case I'd find it hard to disagree. But I was in Y Not II with Zack on Saturday afternoon and I realized that I really like this. And I told Zack there on that spot/stool, "Uh oh, I think I really like this song!" Like the scene in Revenge of The Nerds where the cheerleader comes to the sobering realization "I'm in love with a nerd!", only some strange reversal. All the Santana shit I don't care about, let's get that straight. It's the way Michelle Branch stretches out 'whyyyyyyyyy-hyyyy don't you come around no more?' that gets me. It makes me cringe with a combination of swooning pleasure and revulsion that I can only identify as love. A peculiar kind of love, for that of a song with at least one moment of beguiling 80s-reminscent vocal histrionics to rival anything from Aha, Howard Jones, Ariel Pink or...

Til Tuesday "Voices Carry"

This is my favorite song on the Polish Falcon jukebox. I know there are more tastefull things on it, The Beatles, a Dylan's Greatest, even the Everly Brothers (tho no "I Know We'll Love Again" or "You're Gonna Be Lonely" or even "Dream") but this is just a perfect fucking pop song. The cautious, ephemeral fade-in, ghosty keyboards, Aimee Mann's long-since abandoned yelpy vocal style. This has that quality from 80s songs that I find fascinating in that they just seem to leave plume in their wake. Zack said it would be better if the chorus said "This is scary". But that would defeat the whole premise of the song, which is that Aimee Mann's boyfriend is making her suspicious, always wanted her to keep her voice down, keep a low profile. "Fuck THAT!" she essentially says, by the end mockingly yelling "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP", throwing the corsage he gave her back in his face and just generally making a scene at the opera house. If I were a DJ I would play this back to back with "Shut Up Shut Up" by the Residents. I don't think I'd be asked back.

Ariel Pink "Oceans of Weep"

Rain sounds. Piano sounds. Very plaintive vocals sung over the phone (sounds like anyway). This is one of the songs, like My Bloody Valentine where I'm thinking "What are they saying? And do I even want to know, based off prior experience, and also just the fact that this emits a beautiful sound?" I think Ariel Pink's greatness lies partly in his consciousness of the way music sounds coming out of an abyss. You have a stereo sitting in your room and put this disc in it and it produces music. Is that too reductionist? I think this song is close to what DJ Shadow wanted when he was in his "80s period". Something I admire in a performance is when a performer is willing to just vomit out whatever's there to vomit out and see how far it goes, when art reverts to an infant state, from Suicide to Will Ferrell shrieking in a phone booth.

Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie

The premise of the film is hilarious: A man named Dr. Manzini owns an antique store in which there's a pail that contains, ala pandora's box, a bunch of ugly "kids". When the kids get out of the box, wackiness and chicanery ensue. But the real message of the film becomes clear when the "kids" are persecuted for being ugly. They're taken to a prison where the ugly, weird and fat are kept. Up to this point, Dr. Manzini, whose attempts at writing a jingle that will 'send the kids back in the pay-ole!' have fay-oled, so he and a little boy, whose post-adolescent love interest has dressed him in a glittery bowtie and vest sans the shirt ensemble, must free the "kids". The little boy enlists the help of some local bikers from The Toughest Bar in The World, to help him and Dr. Manzini break into the prison. While they're at, they also free Santa Claus and a man being held in a cage marked "too weird". The man does resemble Weird Al Yankovic a little. Is the film a comment on 80s conformity and fashion? (The kid's love interest is an aspiring fashion designer who goes out with a tough lad named "Juice".) And was it written, as my friend Casey suggested, by a flunkie at Topps? Maybe the person who also writes the texts on the back of the trading cards from which Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie was adapted? Someone also pointed out that the girl who vomits (they have superpowers, so to speak) doesn't do so until the end. I forgot how it ends.

Please use this in speech from now on: "TOTALLY WOTALLY!"

What should I have for lunch?

Have you imagined what it would be like watching yourself trying to get out of trouble?

I wonder if the other patrons can hear me under my breath.

I considered trying a longish post about the last three days of my life, which if they haven't been hell, they were in the vicinity. That's right, I actually consider beforehand what I'm going to post about. Which means I've officially made this blog my surrogate therapy session. Congratulations, unsuspecting visitors!

30 hours of slinging dishes in three days. When they say that physically grueling work takes the life out of you, they are right. But I remember now my rule, tho I never follow it, about wiping the memory clean to a spotless shine after leaving that place, which may or may not make things worse. It's all like counting how many needles are falling into the many haystacks around me.

All I can say about the last three days is, I won the wet t-shirt contest!

Please say this out loud:

JOURNAL JOURNEY

Wherever you're reading this, please say the following phrase out loud:

BUTTERY BIB LETTUCE

Does blogging remind anyone else of shadow puppets?

Does anyone else want to see K. Silem Mohammad do the Nestle song, with the 'Chaaaaawwk-late'?

Feeling naughty. Deal with it, America!

Sandra, everytime I try to live as variously as possible, I get rejected!

I'm afraid of you too.

Summer scares me. Seriously it does. Something about the warmer weather making lots of people take there clothes off. Going swimming. Males competing for females' attention. Showing off their virility. 'Peacocking'.

I love swimming, but summer scares me. Why is that? Something psychological as all get out I'm sure.

These are my favorite songs at the moment:
Rolling Stones "Let It Loose"- Besides the beautiful guitar part at the beginning, this song is fascanating because it's really just barely there. It builds and then at the end different singers come in and it's really moving. But apropos of the title, the song is very loose; a strictly maintained beat underpinning a miasma of moaning, cooing singing, and what really amounts to noodling, good noodling. I had a professer who complained that when Keith Richards and Chuck Berry jammed, Richards couldn't keep up. But Chuck Berry didn't write 'Jumpin Jack Flash', 'Loving Cup' or this song. It's like an orgiastic funeral procession. Only ye old Stones could pull that off.

Pavement "Rattled By The Rush"- Has a similar feel, or tempo anyway. And Malkmus had better lyrics. Makes me get weepy toward the end in a similar to 'Let It Loose', when Malkmus keeps saying 'makes you wanna say your prayers'. Spiral Stairs was an underrated guitarist for sure.

Jana Hunter- It's on the mix cd my friend Amanda made for me but she didn't write down the title. But it starts out with the lyrics 'Laughing and crying are the same thing' and it's a capela.

Oh Hi. I was just wondering if you're alive. Or if you're alive later, maybe we could be alive together. I'll be alive for a while so call me.

Last week I saw Animal Collective play for the second time at The Metro in Chicago. Robert said he felt ecstatic at certain points in the show and so did I. The Metro is a nice theater too, more reverberant than the venue I saw them at the first time at the U. of Chicago. Animal Collective are one the few reasons compelling enough to get me to visit Chicago, and maybe for that matter, get out of bed. Sorry Chicago people. Bed, I ain't madatcha. The first song was 'Doggy' from Campfire Songs, a sample of the guitar part from that song on a loop accompanied by various pulses and electronic noises from Geologist, and of course Avey Tare and Panda Bear singing. There was no guitar in the show, which was a departure from at the U. of C. where they were a full band, and the songs were more like slow-building My Bloody Valentine walls of sound. They played alot of new material, which was good, tho Robert said they didn't play 'Reverend Green', which he had been talking to me about. The songs would start at a pulse, with some whispering sounds and various noises, then swell to at points deafening volume. Robert said it was the lowest bass he'd ever heard. Me too. You could feel it penetrating your chest, almost replacing your heartbeat. There was a lanky blond guy in a baggy shirt who was dancing ecstatically throughout, even during the quieter parts, but the quieter parts did have a pulse that you can dance to. I mainly jiggled around in place but that was more than most people were doing. You'd think there'd be alot more dancing at AC shows. But everybody was packed in. When the first piano tinklings of 'Loch Raven' sounded people responded to it immediately. Even at an Animal Collective show, especially at an Animal Collective show, the audience responds to the more familiar material, which is something I'd normally associate with Peter Frampton concerts. And 'Loch Raven' isn't a riff-driven song at all, tho this rendering of it gave me a new appreciation. 'We Tigers' was a high-point in the set, as it was the first time I saw them do it. It seems to come at a cathartic point, the electronics and bass pulses stripped away, so all it is is three people hitting a drum, whooping and dancing around. No encore, tho Panda Bear stood in front of his bank of samplers and keys for a protracted amount of time, prompting one of the tech-people to walk up and ask if there was anything he needed or if he was ok. I think he was. I think I could be bros with Panda Bear.

I'm straight.

Last night a guy at Landmark said, 'Get in the van!... Just kidding.'

Trying to remember what I heard in conversation last night on my bike:

College Girl 1: "WOW THAT'S WAY COOL BUZZY BUZZY."

College Girl 2: "May I just posit that..."

______


"..." or "--"

It always seems like I could be working alot harder on my poems. I think, without too much of the stinking-thinking tendency, I can safely say that I'm a pretty lazy person. I don't usually have the energy to send the work out either, whatever that means. But the job takes alot out of me.

Tonight I'm going to the Book Party in my room. Did you think I was going to say 'pants'?

Master Class: Mike Hauser Eats a Bag of Chips

This master class will consist of a captive audience looking on as Mike Hauser eats an entire bag of chips. It will last until Mike is finished with the bag, and feels ready to get up and walk around. He will intermittently speak about topics as diverse as Joseph Ceravolo, couches, how as a boy he was forced to play softball, Cinemax, masturbation habits, and how he believes that dogs' thought processes consist mostly of picturing variously colored balloons ascending. Mike may vomit several times during this master class. The cost to register is 25 dollars.

I guess it bugs me when something is quirky but not quirky enough. When something is sufficiently quirky. You can look at it as a manifestation of capitalism. This will make you feel different. Like the difference between someone pretending to be interested in 'what you're up to', and then leaving at the first oppurtunity. No more than a transaction. But there's no engagement. I guess, and I hesitated to mention him, Billy Collins is an example of sufficiently quirky. Poems that excuse themselves from association with a certain unquirkiness. I mean no one wants to be identified as one of those terrible academic creatures from Kenneth Koch's Fresh Air. So we get poems that are a reenforcement of the difference between normal and weird. But there is no normal. There's no escaping that, and the only pleasure is in the effort. Well yeah, that's obvious actually. It's not about the endpoint. I hope I've somewhat explained myself.

Patron: "Can you find me a book on inspiration? Any one will do."

Librarian: "Any particular author?"

Patron: "No. I just want one book."

____

The saddest thing I can imagine: Someone walking into a record store and saying, "One CD, please!" For some reason this just makes me want to cry!

My friend Dave, who I have known for a long time, and is still one of the funniest people I know, did this to one of those getting-to-know-you email surveys. This is the by far the funniest set of respones I've ever read.

1. What is your occupation?
Getting and responding to email.
2. What color are your socks right now?
My socks don't care about race; they've evolved beyond hatred.
3. What are you listening to right now?
My slacks.
4. What was the last thing you ate?
Brett Kell made me turkey burgers, and I stole some chocolate eggs.
5. Can you drive a stick shift?
How much stick can a stick shift shift?
6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?Porridge.
7. Last person you spoke to on the phone?
A lovely Inuit man who calls me intermittently to ask if I got the flowers he sent me. I don't know his name.
8. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Hey, I'm not on trial here.
9. How old are you today? Acht und Zwanzig.
10. Favorite Drink?
The kind that makes people laugh at my dull-witted bar humor.
11. What is your favorite sport to watch?
F1 Grand Prix racing, because I get to wear my cleavagey Ferrari shirt.
12. Have you ever colored your hair?
Yes, but only because I was really into those "Just For Men" commercials.
13. Favorite food?
Mormon doomsday rations.
14. What was the last movie you watched?
The Monsanto Corporation Presents: "Organic Food Causes AIDS"
15. Favorite day of the year?
Hair Pie Avoidance Week, September 9-15.
1 6. What do you do to vent anger?
I live in an old house without anger vents; I have to use a window unit instead.
17. What was your favorite toy as a child?
Norman Schwartzkopf's Discipline Chair from Hasbro
18. What is your favorite season?
Fall. Because that's when Hair Pie Avoidance Week occurs, September 9-15.
19. Hugs or kisses?
This question only matters if I'm meeting someone from Europe, because I won't do either to Americans.
20. Cherries or Blueberries?
Both badly stain my dentures, so I only eat gummy bears.
21. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back?
I'd prefer it if they wrote me a letter explaining their intentions first, and then if I feel comfortable with it we could proceed with the courting process; that is, if they have my father's approval.
22. Who is most likely to respond?
Police, Fire, and County Officials
23. Who is least likely to respond?
Terry Schaivo?
24. Living arrangements?
I eat and drink things, and then I crap them out. It's a great living arrangement.
25. When was the last time you cried?
During that "Call Empire - Today!" commercial. Immediate delivery of flooring does that to me.
26. What is on the floor of your closet?
A nexus between space and time; not quite what one would describe as a cosmic string but something closer to worm-hole with an unstable event horizon.
27. Who's the friend you have had the longest that you are sending this to?
Justin.
28. What did you do last night?
I hung out in a sleazy bar playing pool with Nate, Justin and some Emo guys.
29. Favorite smells?
Opening a brand new box of Monopoly. It's got a great smell. If I were rich, I'd buy them like packs of cigarettes.

30. What inspires you?
Selfless acts.
31. What are you afraid of?
Losing on "Jeopardy!" because Alex Trebek can be really verbally abusive in private.
32. Plain, cheese or spicy hamburgers?
Spicy? Who came up with that fucking option???
33. Favorite dog breed?
I enjoy a good Dachshund. They can shake the shit out of a ferret.
34. Number of keys on your key ring?
3.
35. How many years at your current job?
9.75 years
36. Favorite day of the week?
Whatever the sarcastic answer would be, I don't know - Monday? Help me out here.
37. How many & which states have you lived in?
One (1) -Wisconsin ( Wisconsin).
38. Favorite holiday?
I get chocolate from me Mum right around Veteran's Day.
39. Ever driven a Motorcycle or heavy machinery?
I used to drive an industrial lathe to work.
40. Who's your favorite NFL team?
The teams with the most insensitive and politically incorrect names - The Washington Redskins, The Minnesota Vikings, The New York Rabbis, and the Cincinnati Brown vs. The Board of Education (formerly the Seattle Separate/Equals)
41. Do you have a house phone that is NOT cordless?
Yes? So?
42. 10 ft of snow or 100 degree weather????
I'm counting on German engineering to somehow deliver them simultaneously.
43. What's the craziest thing you have ever done?
I've had sushi a couple of times...
44. What is your greatest accomplishment to date?
I totally did some cool things in high school that don't seem to be that relevant anymore.
45. What is one thing you would do right now if you could?
I would run a store that sold cigars and very expensive pens. Men would come over to drink cognac in the walk-in humidor and it would be fun, until some misfit inner-city kids challenge our conservative, by-the-book notions and teach us how to love again.
46. What is something you are looking forward to?
Apparently purchasing some babies for Reaca.
47. Give me some good news!Turkey has maintained a secular government in spite of pressure from conservative Muslim clerics! Hooray! Plus I'm free of STDs!

Why am I so fond of commas? My friend Brett told me once that I'm 'comma-happy'. Hi Brett! I just think punctuation is neat.

Every once in a while I consider starting to become a follower of baseball. And since the Brewers have the best record in the league, maybe now would be a good time. I do like looking at the sports section. I heard that Ted Berrigan also liked looking at the sports section, but I imagine he read the entire paper or at least large chunks in one gulp. Tho I have nothing substantial to base that on. When I was younger, much younger, pre-teen younger, I was a big sports fan. And I think I could still do pretty well if quizzed on sports pre-95 or so. But I don't know if I'll ever really 'follow' sports again apart from viewing the sports page once in a while. For one thing, sorry but almost all sports on television are so so tedious for me. Stops and starts. Stops and starts. And I know that in very-Catholic baseball they're all supposed to be a part of the ritual of it. Football obviously has ritual in it but the ritual and the method of it seem less foregrounded. Don't most people just watch football to look for long pass catches and crunchy hits? But I have to say NFL Films is pretty great. I don't think you have to even be a football fan to appreciate NFL Films. And Steve Sabol's favorite artist is guess who-- Joseph Fucking Cornell! I thought that was pretty weird.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is one of the weirdest television shows I've ever seen. It was 'developed' by Norman Lear in the 70s, but it plays more like a soap opera written by Samuel Beckett. The dialogue in the first episode revolves around a waxy yellow layer of grease on Mary Hartman's kitchen floor, a mass-murder of four people, two goats and eight chickens, and The Fernwood Flasher, who turns out to be Mary Hartman's Grandpa Larkin. A very sharp satire of soap operas of the 1960s and 70s, tho I've never seriously watched them so I could be wrong. Louise Lasser as Mary Hartman, is pensive and exciteable at once. A couple of my favorite lines are "Unlock the swinging door!" and "You should never be ashamed of witnessing a mass-murder."

I would like to have sex with a deer, or at least make out with one.

Just kidding!

I would vote Republican if they paid me enough.

Just kidding!

I want to be the first poet on The View.

Just kidding!

If I went to AWP, I would try to sleep with as many women as possible.

Just kidding!

So I've got that part from that song by Band of Horses stuck in my head-- the one that sounds like that one song by Modest Mouse from their first album, but also kind of like Built to Spill, and also that Pixies song that was in that Brad Pitt movie. So it looks I'm gonna have to 'like' yet another Indie Rock band. And I'm even starting to think about listening to Bright Eyes, who for some reason I want to give another chance. I know you'll never change, Conor Oberst, and neither will I, and we are beautiful. Like Peaches and Herb. Like Cagney and Lacey. Like Myers and Mister. Like Lennon and McCartney. Like SM and Spiral Stairs. Like Wendy and Lisa. And so on.

Not that the quirky narrative semi-rant is meant to be an indictment of domesticity or quirkiness. Quirkiness doesn't really need to be defended, not by me anyway, especially since I've secretly enjoyed The Nanny on multiple occasions. What would a poem that addresses a poet's domestic life, or home life, or everyday life sound like? There are scores of examples. It's just that to me, my domestic life is enormously depressing. Here is an example of something I wrote that would seem a shade of my approximation of what a domestic poem might begin to sound like, in the interim. (everything)

Mike-Time

a chair by an open window
need to clear accounts
weather permit is a hassle
keeps coming
day bidet
keeping the right parts clean

the violet, the fake postcard, the anchor

I think that's how it goes. When I go back and read it I'm left with the conclusion that I basicly wrote a poem about ass-maintenence. Yeah that's right. You get the fuckin TMIness in heaps and bushels with me! Not that I wipe my ass with a fake postcard. Is there any such as a fake postcard. "Hello from Amsterdam... Just kidding!"

But I do believe some aspect of domesticity is important, in that it's a major source for the materials one makes poems out of. That's a no-brainer. Maybe my problem is that when I read quirky narratives, I get jealous, because so many quirky narratives portray an upper-middle class existence. Why would I be jealous of such mundanity? I don't know. It's not like I try to be jealous. I don't try to have hairs either. Not that one or that one or that one.

"The post-NY School poem is perhaps the closest thing we have in the 21st century to a normative poetry in the United States."

Is this true? I think there's a certain kind of post-NY School poem that's been birthed by the various MFA mills. Say, a poem where you mention a famous pirate, then your favorite brand of organic tator chips, then mention how 'Stewart' hasn't walked the dog yet. But y' know, if the guy from Coldplay says he's really into 'White Light/White Heat', does that have much currency? Alot of these poems, and there are so many of them that there's no need to blame a particular poet, are quirky narrative. Alot of the stuff in Fence, McSweeney's, Jubilat are quirky narrative. Alot of indie films, say those in the post-Wes Anderson mode, qualify as quirky narrative. I should quit my qualms however, because the key word here is narrative.

The normative thing about quirky narrative poetry is that while it is quirky, it's quirky in a completely acceptable way. It removes things from their context just enough to appear avant, but spare the reader any kind of difficulty. Because difficulty is bad.

The making of a poem contains an implicit difficulty. For starters, what to write? Maybe that seems obvious to point of naivete. But if you believe a poem can contain more and articulate more than just quirkiness, then what? What if you think poetry is maybe the best artform for navigating the world?

Naturally the quirky narrative integrates certain apsects of The New York School Poem into it's ecosystem, but outsources so many others. When Some Trees came out, The Instruction Manual was radical. An imitation of that poem in 2007 that's shorter and blander is not.

I know that some who read this have published multiple poems in multiple places. So I want to ask, just for the hell of it. How should publishing poems, getting poems published, feel? Should it feel anyway at all? Should it feel like, 'This is what it's all about'? Have you ever had an experience of getting something published, and felt say, immensely satisified? Or on the flip, immensely unsatisfied, anitclimatic? (Is there a third 'c' in that word?)

Last night I watched The Cruise, and I think it will be probably be one of my favorite films ever, if it isn't already. I always kind of knew it existed, partly from associating it with Waking Life, which is also great but in a very different way. (Not a doc, to begin...) But I've never really heard anyone I know mention it, in interspace or otherwise.

The Cruise is a documentary about Timothy Speed Levitch, who conducts tours, 'cruises' of Manhattan. His 'cruises' are highly literary, and ridiculously detailed-- for instance noting the seven miles of elevator shaft in the area around the Empire State Building. The film is also the most affecting 'portrait' of any real person I've seen in a long time. It's a documentary, but the affiliation is really only by the fact that it covers 'real life'. What it really is, is a fucking heroicly great piece of filmaking. This has to be one of the best films of the past 10 years.

I especially love the shots that show Levitch, in profile or from in front of the tour bus, narrating the cruise. A shot that shows Levitch and only a few tourists seated at the bottom of the frame, foregrounded over a rapidly disappearing Manhattan, is especially terrrific.

_____

If you don't know about Ron Padgett reading with Daniel Borzutzky, Friday 7pm here, and also this, and live within a reasonable distance, now ya heard.

I was thinking today about what, if anything really bugs me about the Blogs. And I guess if anything it's vanity. And by that I mean my vanity. Others' vanity I don't care about really. I've never seen the point in declaring war on 'phonies'. Because everyone is a phoney. Seriously, who hasn't been a phoney at some point?

I just don't want to be vain. And sometimes this Blog Thing, the instant gratification it gives one, encourages vanity. So I don't want to be vain. Sometimes I can be vain. Sometimes I act out of vanity. Sometimes I just think I'm so fucking glamorous!

Actually I've never felt glamorous. So forget about that. But one should consider where this fits into their work, the work of making poems. And I don't even mean that when you feel yourself being vain or 'snarky' that you should stop. One should consider it is all.

_____

Everytime I watch Pavement videos I'm reminded of how much their music means to me. I know that sounds weird but just look at Steve Malkmus walking backwards through a crowd of people, bumping into them. That is all ye need to know.

I'm very excited to see that The Holy Mountain is coming out on DVD. I can only describe it as one of the most revolting, profound and visually amazing movies I've ever seen. I saw it last year with my friend Amanda, and I remember not actually wanting to go in. We had to go to the late showing of a one-night-only engagement, because so many showed for the first showing. They couldn't let any more people in. But while we were waiting I looked through a little window in the door to the theater, and I really did have one of those little-boy experiences. Like, "This just looks too fucked-up for me." It was the scene where each character visualizes their own mental death-- one character is covered in tarantulas, one character is literally eating a horse's ass, one character has their genitals ripped off, one character is sprayed with what looks like milk by an old man with leopard's heads for mammaries. Et cetera. And poetry is portrayed, along with the rest of the arts as a kind of false enlightenment. But then the film makes a big u-turn and turns out to be an indictment of the very idea of enlightenment. And there are exploding lizards.

So all of sudden after Rod sent me a note, I realized all this went down. Whoah. I had no idear so much damn work had piled up. I only have two hands people! What I like about the form is that it's weirdly erotic, displacing what are 'normal' tasks with tasks that make no sense.

I'm at the library. Someone just fell over. But the librarian helped them up.

In the meantime, I wrote some for Joe, thinking the form could just as well be directed at anyone, and I changed it slightly so each 'Hey...'/Lunatic Renga is in this format: 'Hey Joe I need you to ________, while I ________.'

Here are some:

Hey Joe I need you to love the gluten, while I sob into the spaetzl.

Hey Joe I need you to vaporub the mustard culture, while I watch from inside the DJ booth.

Hey Joe I need you to breakdance next to the bacon paste, while I jump in the denim fish.

Hey Joe I need you to clambake then fistfuck the chocoplot, while I pep talk the VHS policy.

Hey Joe I need you to encourage the english muffins, while I lift my spirits with this stapler.

Hey Joe I need you to channel John Lennon into this frosting sock, while I glance over Zelda Fitzgerald's shoulder at the biggest shit ever.

Hey Joe I need you to douse the porn in I Wanna Take You Higher Hot Sauce, while I come to grips with my own suspension of disbelief.

What is clarity? Immediately Niedecker comes to mind. But that doesn't sit right, as if her work is just a string of Zen Moments. There is alot of pain in her work. See 'Paean To Place'. A very beautiful poem that takes it's context, it's reason for being, from what was a very difficult life.

Clarity is just being able to look straight at things, in writing.

Today I was rejected yet again by a certain magazine. So I've decided no more submissions for them.

___

Sometimes I think I'm my own favorite poet, because I have to be. But only sometimes.

___

As I've noticed happens when I'm very depressed, I'm listening alot to Godspeed You! Black Emperor. What happened to them?

___

Last night, right at the end of the party, I had to take apart the Chocolate Fountain. No I don't work in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. There's nothing fun about taking apart a Goddamn Chocolate Fountain! In fact I don't even wanna look at chocolate right now!!

FUCK CHOCOLATE!!!

___

Was also trying to compose some more Lunatic Rengas, as Joe calls them. But this time I'm giving him more work. For some reason, 'reverse cowboy' is burned into my mind.

___

Had the Perfect Strangers theme stuck in my head, but adding my own words:

Rise and fall
on a shitty sparrow's wing

Life sure blows
for a fat fuck like me

etc.

___

But trying not to feel sorry for myself.

So my Udub account is running out on April 10th, and that has some implications. First, my email will change. I'm just gonna put the new one right here: flabscoresbig@yahoo.com. Secondly, you people are gonna feel me, but less. I will be considerably less connected. Which maybe's good, I don't know. Maybe now without the option of dicking around on the internet, I'll finally read Moby Dick or Ulysess. Maybe I'll even write more. But seeing as how I'll now have to go to the Public Library for Internet Use, it seems that I will definitely be blogging less.

Check these lunatic rengas.

Something I've noticed on other blogs that I look at: not only do other poets eat better than I do, they take pictures of it.

I feel Joe. Yesterday Zack told to come with him to visit his female acquaitance named Sara(h), whom I'd never met. So I did, partly cause I thought I might see Amanda and I could say happy birthday. But what's the first (fucking) thing I had to (had to) do once I set foot in Sara(h)'s apartment? Take a violent shit. From the Chicken Fried Rice laced with Hot Sauce. Joe, we're bros in Hot Sauce Trauma, and other things.

This all brought back some shit horror stories from my life. One is overflowing my Aunt's toilet. And then getting yelled at for referring to it as 'the fucking toilet'. Another is doing the same thing at a friend's parents' condo (!) in Ft Myers. And I've shit my pants a few times...

I should start one of those memes... Hey you guys! Oh never mind!

Last night, I watched Children of Men for a second time. First time, I had a sour taste in my mouth, and even yelled 'c'mon', when Kee said at the end she would name her child 'Dylan'. So I watched the documentary, and that only has an ancilliary connection to what's in the film. Famous scientists and philosophers, including Zizek, predicting global catastrophes, without (except for Zizek) really even trying to relate to the film, all the while accompanied by stock footage from the set of Children of Men. I think it would be funny if the charatcers said the title of film several times throughout: "We must find the Children of Men." And also thinking and wondering why I keep being reminded of The Golden Child, with Eddie Murphy.

So I have two readings of the film. From the first viewing that it's basicly Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars- a reluctant hero, a precious cargo in the form of a woman/child, explosions/bullets, a repressive regime, dystopian elements as a foreground, rebel forces- but way beyond it's depth in terms of the issues it tries to address. Presenting a horrible future where mass numbers of people are 'fugees' (not to be mistaken for Pras, Lauryn Hill, or Wyclef Jean), it always seems to be cloudy except in rural areas, a plague (in this case a plague of infertility), and all of it as a projection of similarity to present times. But does it really get beyond the usual dystopian future motifs?

The second reading is that all of the above mentioned are problems inherent in any film that situates itself in the really-sucky-future/globalization genre. And to be fair Children of Men fleshes out as much as can expected in the span of two or so hours. There's an acceleration in the movie of themes that are already present in the world, paranoia over 'Terrorists', mass numbers of refugees. It's just, I'm bothered when a film actively solicits heavy verisimilitude, a romantic backstory, and action-packed technical wizardry all in one shot. I guess that's what I mean by being beyond it's depth. The most troublesome area of the film is how it addresses the refugees and how they came to be refugees. There are just kind of there. A whole lot of catastrophic shit happened and there they are. I mean it's important to look at a refugee situation as a result of specfic events and not just as all these people, no?

And the hype over the technical virtuosity of the film isn't unwarranted. (The tracking shots! They are impressive.) It's not hard to see that this'll be one of those 'Cult Films', lotsa websites, clubs etc. springing up around it. I would recommend seeing it. It would be interesting to see what others think.

Autechre electro-anxiety in the shower. And yet bopping still.

____


Duffer St. George, the way Elinor Friedberger leans on care, when she says it the second time, in the chorus. That moment where the severe tone of voice gives way to a heavy breath.


____


Too cold biking over the Locust Street Bridge, in a holey pullover and sweater.

____


High School kid piling hot sauces on his friend's tray at the Taco Bell.

I was thinking the Triangle Brat Sale would be today, rather than yesterday, but I was wrong. Now I'm considering Taco Bell. Try and stop me.

____

On the 60 bus, people at two consecutive stops waved the vehicle by, as they were waiting for the much more popular 15 bus. The first person, a woman most likely in her 50/60s, did a kind of misleading gesture with the index finger, suggesting 'Come here, but then pass by me.' The second person, a man in his 20s probably, did a more dismissive be-gone-from-my-sight, right hand swinging low back-and-forth gesture.

Here's my idea of making lines: if you have to think for more than a few seconds about where to break a line, it's a bad sign. It's a phrase, among other phrases, and together they form a poem. Houston Astrodome.

Does blogging make me lazy? Like when I post something, do I subconsciously think I've done 'enough'?

Last night I had a dream that I was with a person I have a crush on. We were talking. And at one point, we walked under some scaffolding and on some planks, in downtown West Bend near the theater. Of course I'm filling in some gaps. I was saying how if I were a manager of performers, all of my clients would be 'freak acts' or 'noise acts'. It was a really pleasant conversation. I don't remember what she was saying, but she was speaking in a very casual and friendly way. I sensed, at some point, that her boyfriend was nearby. I had another dream about another woman who I have somewhat less of a crush on, last week or so. We were supposed to meet at the Taco Bell on Paradise Drive in West Bend. For some reason, this was where this person, who had never been to Wisconsin before, wanted to meet me. I was there alone, waiting for her, when a short man who looked much older than he actually was, explained why everyone had to leave Taco Bell immediately. He was pretty cool about it, tho. It wasn't like closing time at The Foundation.

____

The first dream reminded of how I watched The Science of Sleep last week. For reasons I can't quite articulate, I was really bugged by it. But (I guess if you don't want the ending spoiled then you should STOP READING) the ending has the the man's wishes unrequited. And the person I had the first dream about is someone I will probably never even meet, not anytime in the forseeable future anyway. So I'm thinking about the message of that film's ending. Basicly, sometimes you can get what you want only in dreams.

But dreams aren't reality. And I'm not sexy.

____

So much for 'mind your own business', I guess. I don't think I really meant that anyway. I do think people should share. But I also think they should consider the implications of that.

____

Last week, I was reading Lester Bangs. He's still one of my favorite writers. I was kind of shocked tho, when I realized that the person who wrote this, I think it might have been 'James Taylor Marked For Death', was 22 years old. I've always read Lester as an elder, toddling the reader on his brilliant knee. He did kind of assume that role in his writing tho, especially in a piece like Psychotic Reactions and Carbuerator Dung. That piece begins with his addressing the reader as a group of his grandchildren, then traveling through the present into the future, for a retrospective on The Count Five, who had a minor but influential hit with 'Psychotic Reaction'.

Tomorrow (3/26) I'm reading at Linneman's Riverwest Inn on Locust and Weil at 9pm. Maybe I'll get laid (paid).

What do we think of the idear of something being 'None of your business'? I think it's underrated. Or at least that it could be applied liberally to many of the poet blogs. Not least my own. Its the problem of feeling like one is at a big, disembodied bar/social gathering, jarring against the prospect of instantly publishing something. And something about that disembodied, social aspect makes one say things they would normally only to say to strangers when they were drunk. Maybe some do post drunk. I can't, or rather don't, since the computer lab would be a mighty awful place while one was drunk.

A blog post has the potential to be more widely and instantly read than any book. Not that I wanna start to sound like Time or John Stossel, or the guy who traps sexual predators on Dateline, mewling about the dangers of the Internet.

_____

And everyone should hear this album sooner than later. And yes I heard it before the Pitchfork props came. It is joyful and somewhat unassuming. Sort of has the time/space scheme of a DJ mix. The CD booklet is filled with beautiful collages, which I look at while listening.

Notes Toward a Diagram of Mystery Funk

"I slept on a toilet!! In the dark!!"

Notes Toward a Diagram of Mystery Funk

A poem's potential to induce wow-ness* is not as oblivious to fumes as we think. We say the poem's there. Is it? In a far-beyond-the-dregs-of-old-Wow routine, hard work is the missing ingredient in my syllabic quiche baste. And no one has ever thought of trying to make one (or two) on the George Foreman grill. My poetics dictates that I physically feel the shudders lip-syncing an emotional duet with the next town, i.e. poem, i.e. howdy. This is not just retracing The Plasticity of Fools, or even Emotional Overlay. In the 1970's, some kind of poetic parlay was ALL THE RAGE!!! Game show contestants openly sipping mixed drinks etc. Ugh! Unguito!! Someone praticed pagan cookery in San Jose. And it was you.

(In Pound's THUNDER CANTOS, a specific roar surfaces. A light creamy light, with all the stresses turned off for several pages at a time. Pound asked Zukofsky not to breathe while reading THUNDER CANTOS, or so the legend has it. Pound would not return to this "ladlin' it out" tone until the posthumous FAR BEYOND DRIVEN)

* A criteria stretching back to the Middle Ages and ending somewhere in the Future. As if...

Where I work, people often ask me to do things they need done in the kitchen. The other day, on my way to the shower, in the shower, as I was drying myself, and as I was walking back to my room I was having fun making up such requests that make no sense. Let me see if I can do some:

'Hey Mike, I need you to spatialize that Indonesian burrito paste, we're gonna cook it off in the steam booth.'

'Hey Mike, I need you to rub my cerebral tit while I cold cock these clam baster epigrams.'

'Hey Mike, I need you to come on these monkey wafers in the dark.'

'Hey Mike, I need you to lap up that steak rind, put it in the walk-in 'bot, and dry-hump some more of those parsley beaurocrats for tonight's class war dinner.'

'Hey Mike, I need you to tuna-fold the green bass necks.'

'Hey Mike, I need you to stuff all this ground beef into my backpack PRONTO.'

'Hey Mike, I need you to fertilize the curry-stuffing before it goes out of style.'

'Hey Mike, I need you to perform a pagan ritual while I slaughter this lamb.'

'Hey Mike, I need you to put pancake batter on my leg in time for the Asshole Car Interiors Memorial Dinner and Bake-Off.'

'Hey Mike, I need you to cuddle with this ham while I thrush these artichoke chimneys.'

That was fun! How bout for you?

My birthday is Saturday. Why am I telling you this? My birthday is Saturday. It seemed like I should say it twice. Maybe blogging is Emotional Magic. Or maybe the ultimate realization of Rock n Roll Fantasy. Maybe it is Penultimate Metal. Maybe it is the Quintessence of Maybe.

My UWM computer account will end in less than a month, so I will be doing this alot less soon.

Black Love. Mustache Ride. Cup o Soup. Sweater Vest Octupi. Lonestar Blogging.

Last night I watched episodes 7-13 of The Sopranos Season 5, and as should be expected, I dreamt all night that mobsters were trying to kill me.

Does emotion come from hard work? My friend Robert and I used to always talk about the idea of Emotional Magic, which seemed so melodramatic we couldn't help but ask each other about it constantly. "Is that emotional magic? Is that?" The idea that a magic trick, sleight of hand, willfully bewildering one's audience toward the end of pulling a rabbit out of a hat, would produce an emotional response. The audience would feel a tremendous release of joy, to the point of tears. It would be fun to start a poetic movement called Emotional Magic. But I think in the end it would leave us all in tears, many of us would be driven back to sleeping with stuffed animals. And I already have those kinds of dark thoughts. I mean wouldn't that be more honest than a body pillow or a blow-up doll or whatever. Magic tricks do produce a kind of emotion, but maybe it's the emotion of being bewildered. A lapse between the recognition that produces emotion, and the non-recognition of looking at a magic trick. A poetics of wonderment! The founder of this burgeoning aesthetic approach is Doug Henning.

Is emotion even important? Is it important to talk about that in poetry?

So thinking about how language that doesn't use overtly emotional elements can produce great emotion.

Examples of (in some cases) overt emotion being say, Ginsberg. Swooping motion of directly, self-consciously getting something out. Some of Alice Notley's work also. A desperation in the moment of the text, and also speed, getting it down, to meet it's needs. And to amend, more perhaps a need for the text to be born than for the poet, who is a vessel, to express themselves.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?

So it seems like emotion is tied to address. The act of addressing a specific person, or circumstantially, whoever's reading it.

Then maybe, on the other end, Ashbery, passages say in The Skaters, which are richly emotional but also exhibit a certain avoidance of that directness that lets you know when to feel something. One is no better than the other.

Also on the Ashbery end, thinking of how Pavement songs like Brinx Job, or Type Slowly are very emotional, but the lyrics are tantalizingly indirect.

Here are some workshop doozies. I was told once that something I submitted was 'a little performancey'. Another time it was 'a little Languagey'. The capital 'L' is from Language Poetry, I presume. Yeah, what's with all the language in this poem? I was hoping for nut-covered raisins. A frequent approach is to treat the poem like it were one of those machines filled with prizes, and the reader has to operate a mechanical claw and try to grab one. One compliment was that it sounds like the 'crazy person' on the bus. You know that person on the bus? Didn't Ron Silliman read from Tjanting on the bus? I know Charles Reznikoff did. Like I said, I took it as a compliment. I probably wouldn't actually do it, but I admire those that do. Kind of like people who have great experiences on drugs. I used to worry that because I had so little experience with substances, I would never be able to write like Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg. But alot of the poems in a magazines like Poetry sound much more depraved than anyone, or anything written, on drugs.

A problem maybe is, how do you not get but allow the world into your writing. And then what world? Through what vocabulary? In poetry where referents make cameos in each others' scenarios, is that linguistic speed-dating? Whalen's graph of a mind of a moving is the still the least constricted, laterally reactive model. What's there? Patrick Kavanagh said something like 'That pint, there in front of you.' But then where's the interface between the pint and the pint at the end of the mind? Why a pint? Because he was in McDade's and one was there in front of him. If I write from anything, it's from what I guess is my present circumstance. And it becomes itself really in the writing. Process seems limited as a word. It implies a Pint A and a Pint B. Poems don't end, as long as they're read. They're looked at, and read.

You have to do so much in a poem. It's unbelievable! There are no demands.

And how could I forget "Bury The Hammer", "Carrot Rope", numerous Yo La Tengo, all the indie duets of yore. And of course Conan with Jiminy Glick doing "Silent Night"-- 'furnyiiiiii...."

I like collaborating on poems, because it's like a duet. Like "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing" or "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" or "Total Eclipse of The Heart". But not like "Paradise By The Dashboard Light", which would be maudlin. Something I think I'd rather duet than be in a sexual relationship. Read that however you want.

So I can't I believe I didn't catch this at first, but in #101 of The Annotated My Trip To NYC, Bill Luoma says, "These [paragraphs] are all slides by the way, slides that you would show to relatives after you get back from a trip." (I can't find a paragraph symbol on this keyboard, which is what Luoma uses.)

I had always sensed a pictorial quality in the paragraphs, but not in the imagist sense. Take this sentence for a instance, from 12 Peanuts & an Easton: "They wore regular clothes except for open windbreakers whose front said alternately POL & ICE." So there's a pleasent surprise in reading this of looking at 'POL & ICE' on the page, and visualizing it in the mind. It's a little thing, of course. But one thing that makes Works & Days so endlessly 'readable' is that it's a visual work, as well as a narrative one. Another instance is the Krispy Kreme symbol appearing next to the part where the narrator is describing the best way to eat Krispy Kreme donuts. But a key word in the first-quoted sentence from TAMTTNYC would seem to be 'show'. There's a passivity and a removedness, as in a narrator who says, I want to show you this. And as pleasant as being in a room with a person who wants to show you things, slides from a trip, for instance. Kerouac also writes alot about his prosody, but what keeps it from being a smothering venture for the reader, is that one doesn't the get sense of being told what something means. Same here, I think. I'm still hung up on that old show don't tell chestnut, from English Classes going back farther than I remember. (Mr. Lewis?) But it rings true.

Indie Rock has become like that friend that everyone constantly makes fun of but still keeps around. It seems like the investment alot of people my age (28) had in this music came from the bitterness of having been constantly told 'You missed the 60's'. When I heard Bee Thousand by Guided By Voices I was almost shocked. Like, 'this is as good as The White Album'. It was amazing somehow to 15 year old me that music could still be that good. Of course I had just undergone some no-Motley-Crue-for-you-cuz-they-sing-about-satan trauma, some hybernating with the Dances With Wolves score (which I will always claim has good qualities), and was nearing the end of my interest in sports. But that 'this is as good as the White Album' kinda-realization was a door for me to actually stop caring about the whole now vs. then dichotomy, even if I didn't know it then. But this icky kind of nostalgia persists, everywhere one looks. Definitely in poetry.

But back to Indie Rock, it's interesting to note the change in nomenclature surrounding this genre. And the genre is so broadly defined, it doesn't really exist. Obviously Indie Rock exists in the way Jazz exists, and not in the way a more specificly defined genre such as Be Bop exists. It's almost like saying 'Classic Rock'. Think about it. Just as there is that little (large) niche in every city for a Classic Rock station, there'll soon enough be one for the Indie Rock station. And it'll be aimed at us (18 to 35 at the present time) as we age (dis)gracefully.

The word 'Indie' seems to stick and lend itself to marketing in a peculiar way. Remember when it was 'underground' or 'alternative' or even 'cutting edge'! And of course the word 'punk' is like this gauzy spectrality, looming over the whole field. And obviously the meanings of these words dissolve completely, in the process of being utelized to sell Bloc Party and Bright Eyes albums.

But maybe I'm way off. One definable trend is that music is becoming specialized, more compartmentalized within the internet. Maybe Kurt Cobain would have liked this. Nirvana fans, in the present context, would be able to go to Nirvana's myspace, commiserate among themselves in chat rooms. And Nirvana would never have to sign to a major label. Never have to deal with dreaded jocks!

But maybe that's internet-utopia idealizing.

And maybe there is no next Nirvana. Not that they were so unbelievably great. The Nirvana phenomenon was that people who would never listen to a band like that (supposedly) started listening to a band like that. So much so that (gasp) Michael Jackson was briefly no longer the top-selling artist.

Its come to be considered naive to say 'My favorite kind of music is Indie Rock.' I think it would be funny to say 'Mostly, I'm into alternative.' Remember alternative? Vedder on Time's cover? I have the feeling that kind of media phenomenom-a-non isn't going to happen anymore. The zeitgeist belongs more to technology and the market now than it did even in the 90's. More people are excited about the new iPhone than about the new Arcade Fire, regardless of how you feel about that band.

And nobody missed anything, don't worry. Anyone can get a copy of Bee Thousand, and its still great. The 90's were not a GREAT ERA in music. There was never a time when the nomenclature of music, or even the context of music, was more important than the music. You wouldn't get more out of The Beatles' songs by transporting yourself back to the 60's. You would get more out of the 60's maybe, and realize they 60's were never about the Beatles, or even the 60's.

The trick is not to be fooled by the nomenclature. There is no such thing as Indie Rock. It's really just industry jargon now, and maybe always was. Maybe there never was an Indie Rock. Of course there's independent produced and marketed music. Always will be. But Indie Rock, all it is, is dust in the wind.

I get Wu Tang Clan, Enter The 36 Chambers: This might be the first hip hop album I buy. At first, it sounds kind of scary. You might read whiteness from that statement. But Enter The 36 Chambers is scary. Many of the disses are so effective it sounds like they're directed at you. 'What's that in y' pants? Aww, HUMAN PHESIS. Next time come strapped with a fuckin pampa' 'We have an APB on an MC KILLA! Looks like the work of a Masta.' (Masta Killah) The beats sound like boots stomping through mud. They're bees. You might get stung. Also, best skits of any hip hop album I know about. Accept maybe Three Feet High and Rising. Why don't indie rock albums have skits? I love skits! The ones on this album anyway...

I get The Velvet Underground & Nico: At first I don't like it. The first track sounds like The Mamas & The Papas (I'm fifteen at this point, keep in mind). Waiting For The Man also kind of dissapoints me. I thought this would sound more like Sonic Youth! I want noise. Run Run Run has a loud solo. I don't remember when this album clicked with me, but boy did it! Maybe it was finally European Son, where the glass broke. Nico sounds like my German teacher. Venus in Furs reminds me of the scenes in Jesus of Nazareth that show decadent Romans.

I get Sea & Cake, Sea & Cake: I like this immediately. It reminds me of city parks I never really visited. Bring My Car I Feel To Smash It. Great song title. Clear chiming sound. Reminds me of Steely Dan, which was good then, not good for a while, and now I'm back to admitting I like some of their songs. Despite how they dissed VU.

I get My Bloody Valentine, Loveless: I had first seen them on 120 Minutes (I could blog a whole lot about that too!) and I, in 19-fucking-94 did not own a CD player yet. I wanted the tape so badly tho, I think I all but hugged the dude from Best Buy when he found it for me. I listened on a walkmen in the family Ford Explorer on Hwy 41/45 going north. Later I played it while my mother was giving me driving lessons. She made me take it off. For some reason I thought she might like it. I wrote about it in my school newspaper. Of course crushed on Belinda Butcher.

I get Bugskull, Phantasies and Senseitions: I read that it was groundbreaking and incredible in Alternative Press, this was 94/95 before that magazine became devoted to Emo. First song reminds me of the beginning of St Pepper's, and then the song once it begins reminds me of disco. I like the weirder songs better than the normaler ones. One song is a sloppy watery beat with a phone message from someone named 'Big Ronnie'. Short. My favorite song is called Recoder.

The very first post on this blog (when I thought it would be strictly poesy damaged) was about Bill Luoma's Works and Days. I think I can safely it's one of my favorite books, not that I'm too well-read or anything. It makes sense to give it the sentimental designation 'favorite', because as Alice Notley says on the back (and Anselm Berrigan said in a review of the book I read in an old Po Proj newsletter at Zack's house) (Zack has these old issues of the Po Proj newsletter which John gave to him)(love you John), but like I was saying both of them remark how readable this book is. And I just realized in an more subjective way that no part of it, not even Astrophysics &You or The Annotated My Trip To NYC, projects BOOK outwardly. So much poetry, even terrific poetry, projects BOOK at a little point in the air midway between you and it. But when I read Works & Days I see no projection between me and the book. None of it feels like it was written to be published. How often can one say they read a book and it feels that way? So there are all kinds of words I could throw around here. Maybe 'intimacy' and 'the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction' are on a teeter totter in my mind. In My Trip To NYC, I like the first sentence of each paragraph, and want to read more. 'Jennifer can smoke and I really like her style.' 'Evan and Steve have an 85% hit ratio.' 'I admired the way one side of Cindy's hair fell longer and eyeward.' 'There was an ump named Norm who liked Douglass and he's still the best ump in the league.' Almost all of the beginning sentences of paragraphs have a person's name in them. At first I wondered if there was a method used to write them. Maybe not knowing exactly what this method was detracted from my understanding of it... Now, after reading through it again, I'm not so worried about that.