I'll never forget pullin into Duane Bailey's driveway in high school and havin his brother Robbie open the garage door with a pewter-colored ring on his face and a bag in his hand. I think he's dead now. None of the crowd I knew went in for the toluene glues and such. Some of them hit the gasoline periodically, but it was paint that held their favor more than anything. Pewter paint was the color I remember, but I don't know if it had qualities not available elsewhere in the spectrum.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Waiting on the Bus in Uptown
I left the office Saturday morning around eleven o’clock heading to the stop two blocks away to catch the bus home with the transfer from my trip down earlier. The skies were leaden, pregnant. The buildings, calcified accretions – a barren reef rising from a seafloor of flint – otiose in the absence of life’s green and volatile engines. The weathermen divined that snow would arrive that afternoon, but as yet the sharp edges on creation remained an indictment of summer’s retreat. I left my gloves in my pack and read with numbed hands as I walked, drawing warmth from Welty’s southern landscapes against the rising wind from the north.
A woman sat at the bus stop outside McDonald’s. I passed her and turned to the window of the restaurant. A line of Ojibwe faces peered back at me munching little machine-flattened bricks of fried potatoes and sipping orange soda. They looked past me indifferently as they looked past the woman on the bench and the theater across the street and the village just beyond named for a Christian king and saint and the woods and plains and rivers beyond that. Their pockmarked cheeks moved up and down in andante rhythms under deep black eyes that stretched back eons. I turned and faced the street, aping their nonchalance.
“This must be my day for men with beards! All I see is men with beards today!”
I nodded slightly and tried to smile in a way that was not engaging.
“I haven’t seen my friend Alvin in ages, and he came up to me today with a big beard on his face! What is it with all these beards today? You don’t think men are really wearing beards much these days, do ya?”
I tried to give a benign shrug and a smirk, as if to say, “I’m a foreigner. Please forgive me; I do not understand a word you’re saying.”
The woman had the voice of a well-trained parrot that rose and fell in dramatic fashion irrespective of where natural inflection should lie and the face of my maternal grandmother smiling up at me as she fumbled for a cigarette with gloved hands – little turquoise knitted mittens that hinged back to reveal tattered fabric on her fingers. Her hands trembled a bit.
I inclined my head at her again and tried to give her a pleasant look. I didn’t want to perpetuate the conversation, but I also didn’t want to be too brusque in my retreat and risk offending. I turned back to my book and drew my shoulders in as another gust of wind circled my neck and ran down my spine. Each blow from the north drained another increment of warmth from the reserves I carried and left me that much less to meet the next assault. I folded the book back and tucked it under my arm and buried both fists hard in my pockets. The bus should’ve arrived by now.
I turned back to the window. The panel of faces chewing their cuds and doing their best to maintain a stern countenance gave an almost imperceptible nod back in my direction. I turned back around and faced the theater across the street and noticed a coyote on the sidewalk under the marquis. He was staring back at me. He gave what sounded like a little barking laugh and danced in a quick circle before disappearing around the corner where the tobacco shop had recently moved out next to the cinema. The rest of the street was vacant, save for the woman and me. She noticed her cigarette had gone out. She reached again for the little leather holster that held her pack and returned the remainder into it.
The snow began falling as the bus rounded the corner. I stepped back enough to show her the right of way as it pulled up in front of us, but she merely sat and stared into the side of the bus and said nothing. The flakes were falling heavily already. I stepped up into the bus and sat by the window with the damaged and the penurious overlooking the woman on the bench. She continued to stare just below me at the side of the bus, or through it. She was accumulating puffy little cobwebs of snowflakes all over her head. I looked back at the window of McDonald’s, but my faces were gone. I returned to Eudora Welty. The bus churned me homeward through a thickening white rind that dulled the sharp edges.
A woman sat at the bus stop outside McDonald’s. I passed her and turned to the window of the restaurant. A line of Ojibwe faces peered back at me munching little machine-flattened bricks of fried potatoes and sipping orange soda. They looked past me indifferently as they looked past the woman on the bench and the theater across the street and the village just beyond named for a Christian king and saint and the woods and plains and rivers beyond that. Their pockmarked cheeks moved up and down in andante rhythms under deep black eyes that stretched back eons. I turned and faced the street, aping their nonchalance.
“This must be my day for men with beards! All I see is men with beards today!”
I nodded slightly and tried to smile in a way that was not engaging.
“I haven’t seen my friend Alvin in ages, and he came up to me today with a big beard on his face! What is it with all these beards today? You don’t think men are really wearing beards much these days, do ya?”
I tried to give a benign shrug and a smirk, as if to say, “I’m a foreigner. Please forgive me; I do not understand a word you’re saying.”
The woman had the voice of a well-trained parrot that rose and fell in dramatic fashion irrespective of where natural inflection should lie and the face of my maternal grandmother smiling up at me as she fumbled for a cigarette with gloved hands – little turquoise knitted mittens that hinged back to reveal tattered fabric on her fingers. Her hands trembled a bit.
I inclined my head at her again and tried to give her a pleasant look. I didn’t want to perpetuate the conversation, but I also didn’t want to be too brusque in my retreat and risk offending. I turned back to my book and drew my shoulders in as another gust of wind circled my neck and ran down my spine. Each blow from the north drained another increment of warmth from the reserves I carried and left me that much less to meet the next assault. I folded the book back and tucked it under my arm and buried both fists hard in my pockets. The bus should’ve arrived by now.
I turned back to the window. The panel of faces chewing their cuds and doing their best to maintain a stern countenance gave an almost imperceptible nod back in my direction. I turned back around and faced the theater across the street and noticed a coyote on the sidewalk under the marquis. He was staring back at me. He gave what sounded like a little barking laugh and danced in a quick circle before disappearing around the corner where the tobacco shop had recently moved out next to the cinema. The rest of the street was vacant, save for the woman and me. She noticed her cigarette had gone out. She reached again for the little leather holster that held her pack and returned the remainder into it.
The snow began falling as the bus rounded the corner. I stepped back enough to show her the right of way as it pulled up in front of us, but she merely sat and stared into the side of the bus and said nothing. The flakes were falling heavily already. I stepped up into the bus and sat by the window with the damaged and the penurious overlooking the woman on the bench. She continued to stare just below me at the side of the bus, or through it. She was accumulating puffy little cobwebs of snowflakes all over her head. I looked back at the window of McDonald’s, but my faces were gone. I returned to Eudora Welty. The bus churned me homeward through a thickening white rind that dulled the sharp edges.
Music
The radio is playin CCR, "Long As I Can See The Light". That song has a strange effect on me sometimes. It arrests my attention and makes me forget everything that is crowding in on my consciousness. It's a hokey, pedestrian piece, but it has a quality about it that works on my mind the way certain smells do.
I want to smell Ugh cooking in the kitchen on French St. I want to be building a model airplane on my desk in my bedroom and take off on my bike with my radio bungeed to the book rack. I want to walk all over Irving at night and wonder what's going on out there in the world that I'm missing.
What would it be like right now if my biggest concern was whether the lights were on when I tried to sneak back home near dawn? Can I even conceive of such a life? There is a melancholy that runs slow and deep in me. The surface has ripples and makes a pleasant noise, while there are darker, ponderous shapes moving among the boulders in the depths and covered with moss and muck.
Music does have a power in my life, I suppose.
I want to smell Ugh cooking in the kitchen on French St. I want to be building a model airplane on my desk in my bedroom and take off on my bike with my radio bungeed to the book rack. I want to walk all over Irving at night and wonder what's going on out there in the world that I'm missing.
What would it be like right now if my biggest concern was whether the lights were on when I tried to sneak back home near dawn? Can I even conceive of such a life? There is a melancholy that runs slow and deep in me. The surface has ripples and makes a pleasant noise, while there are darker, ponderous shapes moving among the boulders in the depths and covered with moss and muck.
Music does have a power in my life, I suppose.
Pancakes
I try every morning to catch a certain bus to work. I usually fail. There’s a Latin guy who rides that bus every morning, and he’s very compelling. He’s of average build and wears his hair in a long ponytail. He’s always reading serious books on the bus. Emerson said he wanted to hug any man on a train when he saw him reading a great book. I think I share the sentiment for different reasons. We’ve made small talk a time or two, and I know his name now. He even gave me a flyer a couple of weeks ago for a Mexican hardcore punk show at a house in Ft Worth. I think about him every morning as I catch the first of my two busses. I wonder if I’ll see him. I usually get off at Wayne’s Beckley Grill for a tall stack of pancakes and as much coffee as I can swill down in a short time. I then rush out to try and get back on the next bus, which is the one he rides. I repeatedly fail to make it in time. I’ve got a crush on the guy. It makes me want to learn Spanish and be able to say something interesting. He always looks very friendly in a noncommittal fashion. I could fall off the face of the earth, and he wouldn’t notice, however.
I got to Wayne’s and all hopes of an expedient meal were dashed as I looked upon the new waitress assigned to my table. She appeared consumptive, and drew her upper lip up as she sniffed and wiped her nose with her hand. She then let loose with a very productive, liquid coughing fit that really got me ready to dive into my breakfast with abandon. She was very thin and pale. When she finally limped over to my table with my breakfast, I immediately noticed little bits of foreign matter in my paper tubs of butter. Two of these tiny flecks appeared to just be tobacco spit from the cook’s unfiltered cigarette, but the third lump looked like it fell out of my waitresses nose. I carved the detritus from my food with a sufficient amount of the surrounding butter to feel safely untainted. I’m not very squeamish most times.
I got to Wayne’s and all hopes of an expedient meal were dashed as I looked upon the new waitress assigned to my table. She appeared consumptive, and drew her upper lip up as she sniffed and wiped her nose with her hand. She then let loose with a very productive, liquid coughing fit that really got me ready to dive into my breakfast with abandon. She was very thin and pale. When she finally limped over to my table with my breakfast, I immediately noticed little bits of foreign matter in my paper tubs of butter. Two of these tiny flecks appeared to just be tobacco spit from the cook’s unfiltered cigarette, but the third lump looked like it fell out of my waitresses nose. I carved the detritus from my food with a sufficient amount of the surrounding butter to feel safely untainted. I’m not very squeamish most times.
October 2000
So nothing really happened. Not a yes and not a no, but a "wait a little while longer". Interminably drawing out the process. Let me go and let me be. Never do I feel so insignificant or helpless as when I am in the courthouse watching the toils of the judicial system. I created this set of circumstances for myself; I never conceived how this would evolve.
I leave the court and make my way downtown to wait on a connecting bus. I'm standing on the corner trying to read Stendhal and not think about my agitation. A black man in bibs comes walking down the sidewalk carrying a placard with references to the relevance of the Oklahoma City bombing in lite of some obscure verse from the book of Amos complete with magazine pictures and ad art. He is shouting in an admirably booming voice that I can hear from fifty yards away, but which I cannot discern any words until he is almost upon me. "Nigga gonna do everythang! What mah Gawd say!" I could glean no other pearls from his rant, but I tried to ponder these.
I spent the weekend trying to avoid thinking of anything important. I chewed my nails and fucked around on the computer. I went to the movie yesterday to see "Lost Souls". I got off the bus a few blocks from the theater and was chewing my thumbnail. A man who was coming my direction down the service road perpendicular to my right as I crossed shouted, "Look at that grown man suckin his thumb!" He went on shouting, but I was too far to hear exactly what.
I came out of the movie unimpressed into a pouring rain and waited almost an hour for a bus getting soaked to the skin. I finally made it home. Sometimes the hardest thing I can do is to say nothing at all. I do not do reticence very well. I drive you away with my attentions, and I suffer acutely by my own concentrated energies towards you. I'm consumed by my own fires. Your indifference is the fuel that feeds them. I only wish to be close to you in order to feel that warmth reflected and not be burned up.
I've slept little, but I'm accustomed to that. Some day I will die and have the rest I deprived myself of during my life.
It occurred to me riding home soaked in my clothes and freezing in the air-conditioned bus that my sin is my willingness to endure; to endure the consequences of my acts and adapt to them. My cheerfulness is my curse; my melancholy is my solace. I live in my head. I act precipitously in my affairs. It seems to remind me that I'm alive; but it is caprice that drives me in such things, not strength of will.
God, let me fly away. I'm so tired, and I'm smothering. Save me from this body of death.
I'll sleep tonight and feel better tomorrow. That's how it always goes. I'll endure my own mediocrity. That sort of attitude is applauded nowadays. I'm a survivor - inert.
I cry so easily, but what do I love?
I leave the court and make my way downtown to wait on a connecting bus. I'm standing on the corner trying to read Stendhal and not think about my agitation. A black man in bibs comes walking down the sidewalk carrying a placard with references to the relevance of the Oklahoma City bombing in lite of some obscure verse from the book of Amos complete with magazine pictures and ad art. He is shouting in an admirably booming voice that I can hear from fifty yards away, but which I cannot discern any words until he is almost upon me. "Nigga gonna do everythang! What mah Gawd say!" I could glean no other pearls from his rant, but I tried to ponder these.
I spent the weekend trying to avoid thinking of anything important. I chewed my nails and fucked around on the computer. I went to the movie yesterday to see "Lost Souls". I got off the bus a few blocks from the theater and was chewing my thumbnail. A man who was coming my direction down the service road perpendicular to my right as I crossed shouted, "Look at that grown man suckin his thumb!" He went on shouting, but I was too far to hear exactly what.
I came out of the movie unimpressed into a pouring rain and waited almost an hour for a bus getting soaked to the skin. I finally made it home. Sometimes the hardest thing I can do is to say nothing at all. I do not do reticence very well. I drive you away with my attentions, and I suffer acutely by my own concentrated energies towards you. I'm consumed by my own fires. Your indifference is the fuel that feeds them. I only wish to be close to you in order to feel that warmth reflected and not be burned up.
I've slept little, but I'm accustomed to that. Some day I will die and have the rest I deprived myself of during my life.
It occurred to me riding home soaked in my clothes and freezing in the air-conditioned bus that my sin is my willingness to endure; to endure the consequences of my acts and adapt to them. My cheerfulness is my curse; my melancholy is my solace. I live in my head. I act precipitously in my affairs. It seems to remind me that I'm alive; but it is caprice that drives me in such things, not strength of will.
God, let me fly away. I'm so tired, and I'm smothering. Save me from this body of death.
I'll sleep tonight and feel better tomorrow. That's how it always goes. I'll endure my own mediocrity. That sort of attitude is applauded nowadays. I'm a survivor - inert.
I cry so easily, but what do I love?
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
old musings
honest to god, just now I think I'm as content as I've ever been in my life. and my circumstances are as fluid as they've ever been. there is no connection between where I was materially, emotionally, and mentally just one year ago and where I sit right now. I do think I was better off spiritually, however, when I most despaired of anything in my life ever improving by my own best efforts. at no other time have I ever held such a continuous and desperate dialogue with what I think of as my Father(natural tendency, I think) - most of it me whining and cursing and wallowing in self-pity. but there were moments when I counted up what I had been blessed with as a result of all my errors and misjudgments. this is one of those moments, I guess.
I know that I can endure a lot more than I thought possible. I know that there are consequences, direct and unintended, for every decision I make, and I inevitably create or allow every circumstance I find myself in by following the blind path of pure self-interest. those are difficult lessons to learn, and knowing those certitudes and continuing in fallibility is even tougher to accept. I think some of that awakening is just a function of getting older. I can't take credit for any of that. I also know that there are scads of people out there who learn all of that very early and don't brag about what to them seems axiomatic about life. it took me a bit longer to get all of that. I think there are a lot of people just like me as well. it makes their faults easier to take. I hope I have learned a little humility, but I won't ask for any more. asking has power that I'm careful in approaching nowadays.
I got a little emotional. there is a feeling, partly plain gratitude, that makes me feel terribly insignificant, yet curiously watched over and tended to. there is a Firm Center to it that is unyielding, but there are moments when I feel that the Whole of it is turned to me and me alone and it's almost too much to think about. it makes me cry. writing about it makes me look a little off-center. I don't think that hurts anything either, for that matter.
and as quickly as that, the sensation leaves me. whatever happens in my life, I figure I'll be okay.
Carry On
Sometimes I think I'll just burn right up. Sometimes I fear my fire will go out. Sometimes I think I could light up the darkest night with the blaze in my brain that makes me want to stick my face underwater and scream til every molecule of oxygen in my body is expended and there's nothing to feed it anymore.
I'll just be a bit of swamp gas belched up from the bottom of the mud pit. A momentary stench and then forgotten.
I'll just be a bit of swamp gas belched up from the bottom of the mud pit. A momentary stench and then forgotten.
My dilemna
I had not the patience to carry out any of the measured, stepwise processes deemed necessary to ensure a surfeit of success in this life. My behavior had always been precipitous at best. Living was a recurring series of setbacks – a chronic condition to be endured while awaiting the unspoken promise of rescue to be fulfilled.
To this end I did my best to maintain a cheerful disposition and not limit the avenues by which Providence would deliver me from the consequences of my manifold crimes. I expended a great deal of energy holding forth my steady watch over the spinning world of fluid circumstance. I counted my sobriety a light burden to lay down in the service of this vigilance. It was a necessary expense to provide a measure of lubrication for my mental machinery already so heavily taxed by the vicissitudes of a misspent youth.
To this end I did my best to maintain a cheerful disposition and not limit the avenues by which Providence would deliver me from the consequences of my manifold crimes. I expended a great deal of energy holding forth my steady watch over the spinning world of fluid circumstance. I counted my sobriety a light burden to lay down in the service of this vigilance. It was a necessary expense to provide a measure of lubrication for my mental machinery already so heavily taxed by the vicissitudes of a misspent youth.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Peeling Pears
I've got a dozen goddamn buckets of pears on my kitchen floor, so this is my life for the present time. Someone come by and smoke me up and keep me company. Lectures on psychoanalysis ain't cuttin it.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Favorite Musicians and Artists
Some of these folks are otherwise parts of ensembles that I may or may not like. None of them are obscure, and I'm sure I sound like a Pitchfork poser on some of them. But I'm too old to care much about that at this point. Anyway, here is a quick list of no pre-determined length of some of my personal favorites with perhaps a brief note as to what makes them particularly important to me. Or not.
1) Roky Erickson - incredibly influential perhaps, and a seminal artist in an embryonic moment, the crystallization of what was best and what was meant, if anything - perhaps by the Geist - by the Texas garage scene of the mid-Sixties, and Austin, when Austin actually meant something. Austin stopped really meaning anything meaningful long about 1986 or so, I think. Maybe earlier. Maybe it died with Rock Against Reagan.
Anyway, I love Roky. Roky is listening to my sisters' 45's when I was six years old. It's stopping at the Pirate's Den flea market way up on north Lamar as we would leave Austin, so I could buy comics back in 1969 and 1970, and we would listen to the AM radio in mom's '68 Ford Galaxy 500 and make the long trip back on the Old Dallas Rd as I read the Conan books and horror comics I'd bought at the flea market.
I've seen him live a few times, but only in recent years. There was something odd about seeing him at Chaos a couple years back, especially with Billy Gibbons arriving for a guest appearance, complete with that weird nipple hat of his. I was proud of Kevin opening up for Roky. It was a cool night.
I have a sentimental attachment to him. He is a true Texas artist, if anyone is, I'll grant you that.
2) Syd Barrett - Take all that groovy, hippie, acid shit and give it a DSM IV diagnosis...and another few doses. Jesus. The Beast Who Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, if I ever heard it.
3) Skip Spence - Like Syd, I hear something breaking down. Something powerful thwarted and inflected through a piece of smashed glass or processed with broken machinery, such that it achieves a unique beauty. May be my most prized piece of vinyl next to Easter Everywhere.
4) Jeff Mangum - My ex Matt in Minneapolis hates Neutral Milk Hotel, so my affection for this guy has always given me a sense of integrity about my aesthetic sense. I don't think Mangum is genius. I think he is intuitive. In the Aeroplanes Over the Sea is maybe the best album of the last twenty years.
5) Anton Newcombe - I don't care about the film, though it was fun to watch. I got into BJM just shortly before it came out, which was about eight years late, I suppose, but still. This is just a guy who is incredibly talented, prolific, creative, in my mind likable, somewhat tortured (for some reason with me always a plus. I don't know why that should be so, really) and who apparently grew up listening to almost exactly the same music I did. I don't think he is regurgitating anything at all. I just know that whatever he does always sounds right and familiar, even if it also sounds new. We draw from different wells on the same aquifer I guess.
I've seen him a few times. He has spawned an incredible number of bands and influenced an entire generation of artists, whether people realize it or not. He does it all on the cheap and makes no excuses. Give It Back is probably one of my favorite albums of all time, and to me it is essentially meaningless. That really doesn't matter to me. It proves to me either way that someone else was soaking in the same juices all those years. I really love this guy.
6) Calvin Johnson - I saw him at the 7th St Entry in Minneapolis while a metal band played at 1st Ave on the other side of an adjoining wall. And it didn't matter. I was whistling at his command and clapping along and singing, and I was in a state of arrest. The guy has a voice that to me would be otherwise somewhat jarring, even if he's in tune, just because of its, I guess bartone?, quality. But there's something ballsy about it to me.
7) Jad Fair - Man, this guy is perfect. I mean, if you want to make music, just do it! Who cares what you think you know. I tremble a bit at that.
Besides, if Mo Tucker wants to play with him, he must be worthwhile.
8) Stephin Merritt - He wrecks me. This one is partly personal and all about my life with Matt all those years ago. But it's also about how incredibly creative he is as an artist. Still, 69 Love Songs is really all about house-sitting in Wayzata, Minnesota with the guy who, to this day, probably wrecked me for anyone else. Merritt's songs make me cry. Maudlin and schmaltzy? Perhaps. Who cares? They're great tunes in any case. Listening to them reminds me that I will always be in love with every guy I've ever loved. However, and this doesn't take away from any of the others one little bit, there was something magical about the six years of my life in which I belonged solely and completely to Matt Greenwood. A lot of that, perhaps, is because it coincided with the other great adventure of my life, leaving Texas and my family behind for a time. But Matt is forever special to me either way, as is his family. And 69 Love Songs is something of a sacrament of that, I think.
9) Steve Marriott - Jesus God, the quintessential rock vocalist. Nobody better. Incredible. Stage presence for the nations. I mean, cmon. Makes me wanna screw somethin.
10) Ray Johnson - If ever someone's entire life embodied their creative mission, if you can call if that; if ever someone's life personified their artistic integrity, it was this guy. There is no one greater, in my estimation, if you judge them by those criteria.
11) Andy Warhol - Whether you like him or not, no single individual had a greater impact upon fine art, popular culture or culture in general in the last one hundred years than Andy Warhol. I'll stand by that statement. I applaud it.
12) Robert Pollard - Does it make sense to say that this guy is a comfort to me? I'm awed by the his output, but he just seems like a regular guy.
I think there's something to that. A lot of the artists who I admire are either guys who are tortured by something, deal with something, or otherwise seem accessible to me and make their own creative processes somewhat less mysterious as well. They empower folks like me to do anything we want to be expressions of whatever is universal about our experience. I don't think that's too difficult to discern from my list so far.
13) Marcel Duchamp - Everything is derivative, and nothing is sacred. And art is not the particular purview of some regimented elite. It stands apart from all that.
14) Henry Darger - What I wouldn't give to have one of his paintings. True outsider art. Darger had perhaps the richest interior life of any human being who ever lived, inasmuch as it is documented as such. There certainly may have been others, but they left no record, no groaning of the spirit to match his output.
15) Tracy Emin - A big fuck you to the art world from someone talented enough to make that statement. Amen.
16) Frida Kahlo - I saw an exhibit of her work at the Dallas Museum of Art in December of 2000. It effected me. That doesn't always happen. It has only rarely happened, actually, and the only other moment that springs to mind is from Florence in 1981.
17.) Deacon Lunchbox - Dude could be my twin, only I'm better lookin.
I'll think of more later.
1) Roky Erickson - incredibly influential perhaps, and a seminal artist in an embryonic moment, the crystallization of what was best and what was meant, if anything - perhaps by the Geist - by the Texas garage scene of the mid-Sixties, and Austin, when Austin actually meant something. Austin stopped really meaning anything meaningful long about 1986 or so, I think. Maybe earlier. Maybe it died with Rock Against Reagan.
Anyway, I love Roky. Roky is listening to my sisters' 45's when I was six years old. It's stopping at the Pirate's Den flea market way up on north Lamar as we would leave Austin, so I could buy comics back in 1969 and 1970, and we would listen to the AM radio in mom's '68 Ford Galaxy 500 and make the long trip back on the Old Dallas Rd as I read the Conan books and horror comics I'd bought at the flea market.
I've seen him live a few times, but only in recent years. There was something odd about seeing him at Chaos a couple years back, especially with Billy Gibbons arriving for a guest appearance, complete with that weird nipple hat of his. I was proud of Kevin opening up for Roky. It was a cool night.
I have a sentimental attachment to him. He is a true Texas artist, if anyone is, I'll grant you that.
2) Syd Barrett - Take all that groovy, hippie, acid shit and give it a DSM IV diagnosis...and another few doses. Jesus. The Beast Who Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, if I ever heard it.
3) Skip Spence - Like Syd, I hear something breaking down. Something powerful thwarted and inflected through a piece of smashed glass or processed with broken machinery, such that it achieves a unique beauty. May be my most prized piece of vinyl next to Easter Everywhere.
4) Jeff Mangum - My ex Matt in Minneapolis hates Neutral Milk Hotel, so my affection for this guy has always given me a sense of integrity about my aesthetic sense. I don't think Mangum is genius. I think he is intuitive. In the Aeroplanes Over the Sea is maybe the best album of the last twenty years.
5) Anton Newcombe - I don't care about the film, though it was fun to watch. I got into BJM just shortly before it came out, which was about eight years late, I suppose, but still. This is just a guy who is incredibly talented, prolific, creative, in my mind likable, somewhat tortured (for some reason with me always a plus. I don't know why that should be so, really) and who apparently grew up listening to almost exactly the same music I did. I don't think he is regurgitating anything at all. I just know that whatever he does always sounds right and familiar, even if it also sounds new. We draw from different wells on the same aquifer I guess.
I've seen him a few times. He has spawned an incredible number of bands and influenced an entire generation of artists, whether people realize it or not. He does it all on the cheap and makes no excuses. Give It Back is probably one of my favorite albums of all time, and to me it is essentially meaningless. That really doesn't matter to me. It proves to me either way that someone else was soaking in the same juices all those years. I really love this guy.
6) Calvin Johnson - I saw him at the 7th St Entry in Minneapolis while a metal band played at 1st Ave on the other side of an adjoining wall. And it didn't matter. I was whistling at his command and clapping along and singing, and I was in a state of arrest. The guy has a voice that to me would be otherwise somewhat jarring, even if he's in tune, just because of its, I guess bartone?, quality. But there's something ballsy about it to me.
7) Jad Fair - Man, this guy is perfect. I mean, if you want to make music, just do it! Who cares what you think you know. I tremble a bit at that.
Besides, if Mo Tucker wants to play with him, he must be worthwhile.
8) Stephin Merritt - He wrecks me. This one is partly personal and all about my life with Matt all those years ago. But it's also about how incredibly creative he is as an artist. Still, 69 Love Songs is really all about house-sitting in Wayzata, Minnesota with the guy who, to this day, probably wrecked me for anyone else. Merritt's songs make me cry. Maudlin and schmaltzy? Perhaps. Who cares? They're great tunes in any case. Listening to them reminds me that I will always be in love with every guy I've ever loved. However, and this doesn't take away from any of the others one little bit, there was something magical about the six years of my life in which I belonged solely and completely to Matt Greenwood. A lot of that, perhaps, is because it coincided with the other great adventure of my life, leaving Texas and my family behind for a time. But Matt is forever special to me either way, as is his family. And 69 Love Songs is something of a sacrament of that, I think.
9) Steve Marriott - Jesus God, the quintessential rock vocalist. Nobody better. Incredible. Stage presence for the nations. I mean, cmon. Makes me wanna screw somethin.
10) Ray Johnson - If ever someone's entire life embodied their creative mission, if you can call if that; if ever someone's life personified their artistic integrity, it was this guy. There is no one greater, in my estimation, if you judge them by those criteria.
11) Andy Warhol - Whether you like him or not, no single individual had a greater impact upon fine art, popular culture or culture in general in the last one hundred years than Andy Warhol. I'll stand by that statement. I applaud it.
12) Robert Pollard - Does it make sense to say that this guy is a comfort to me? I'm awed by the his output, but he just seems like a regular guy.
I think there's something to that. A lot of the artists who I admire are either guys who are tortured by something, deal with something, or otherwise seem accessible to me and make their own creative processes somewhat less mysterious as well. They empower folks like me to do anything we want to be expressions of whatever is universal about our experience. I don't think that's too difficult to discern from my list so far.
13) Marcel Duchamp - Everything is derivative, and nothing is sacred. And art is not the particular purview of some regimented elite. It stands apart from all that.
14) Henry Darger - What I wouldn't give to have one of his paintings. True outsider art. Darger had perhaps the richest interior life of any human being who ever lived, inasmuch as it is documented as such. There certainly may have been others, but they left no record, no groaning of the spirit to match his output.
15) Tracy Emin - A big fuck you to the art world from someone talented enough to make that statement. Amen.
16) Frida Kahlo - I saw an exhibit of her work at the Dallas Museum of Art in December of 2000. It effected me. That doesn't always happen. It has only rarely happened, actually, and the only other moment that springs to mind is from Florence in 1981.
17.) Deacon Lunchbox - Dude could be my twin, only I'm better lookin.
I'll think of more later.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Dicey
Dicey was my weed connect
She was a fat Comanche woman
And but for a nominal diff'rence in plumbin
She was like a man in every respect
She came by her money thru boostin and dealin
Allowin as how it was owed to her
And takin whatever was showed to her
With clear conscience; it's Indian-givin, not stealin
Daily at lunchtime I's sneakin away
To hang with her mother and her at her house
All manner of thievery they would espouse
Her underarm flab as she vacuumed would sway
I don't have much sympathy for her it seems
As if on the White conscience her people would prey
She gave me her food surplus marked "BIA"
I still see those generic tins in my dreams
But I don't begrudge her that portion of fun
Though I might righteously object
To her gumption I give every ounce of respect
And grant kleptomania time in the sun
And for every other sin she might have had
From shoplifting to shorting me on the weed
On some things most fiends would be agreed
Any dealer who fronts cannot be that bad.
She was a fat Comanche woman
And but for a nominal diff'rence in plumbin
She was like a man in every respect
She came by her money thru boostin and dealin
Allowin as how it was owed to her
And takin whatever was showed to her
With clear conscience; it's Indian-givin, not stealin
Daily at lunchtime I's sneakin away
To hang with her mother and her at her house
All manner of thievery they would espouse
Her underarm flab as she vacuumed would sway
I don't have much sympathy for her it seems
As if on the White conscience her people would prey
She gave me her food surplus marked "BIA"
I still see those generic tins in my dreams
But I don't begrudge her that portion of fun
Though I might righteously object
To her gumption I give every ounce of respect
And grant kleptomania time in the sun
And for every other sin she might have had
From shoplifting to shorting me on the weed
On some things most fiends would be agreed
Any dealer who fronts cannot be that bad.
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