Autumn Sonata

I just finished Bergman's "Autumn Sonata" last night, the night before that was Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."  I remember reading that Allen was once called "America's Bergman."  Unfortunate though flattering comparison for him. His admiration for, and imitation of, Bergman is evident.  The Allen film was like being at Disney World compared to Bergman. Though in fairness Allen's film was meant to be a comedy. The other doesn't contain a single laugh, not even a smile.  Ingrid Bergman does a good job with the role.  I believe it was the only time that the two Swedish Bergmans worked together, one of the last major roles of the actresses career, if not the very last.  Back when the word "actress" was not a gender slur.

Watching an Ingmar Bergman film is almost always difficult.  I had seen this film before but had not ever sat and watched it all the way through.  It is psychologically taxing to watch.  The emotional distances and damage that we inflict on one another, the trying experience of family and how we all grow out of shape from that experience. The inner wounds we all develop in relation to it.  The private pain. The yearning for resolution.

Liv Ullmann, longtime collaborator with Bergman, was perfect for the role.  Her roles in "Persona" and "Hour of the Wolf" are also among my all time favorites from cinema.  I'm sure there were others but I'm too lazy to look anything up today.

I have never had a large family and have never been entirely envious of those who do.  It seems like a burden, though I also see the joy in is as well.  I suppose I just shy from the emotional responsibilities of it. With friends you at least have some choice in the matter, though admittedly not always as much as you'd like, or sometimes need.  That's what my friends have told me anyway.

With the Woody Allen film the narration fluctuates between unnecessary, annoying or entirely distracting. It's as if a narrator, and one not of your choosing or liking, is telling you about a film you'd like to watch, describing each scene.  The only down side is that he's doing so while you're trying to watch the film. Too much of the information was just unnecessary.  It was not a bad film but Woody Allen has done much better.  I know many people did not care for his "British trilogy."  I only saw "Match Point" and thought that it was passable, but not great.  His efforts to examine character seem so superficial in comparison to Bergman, even mawkish at times.  

I go now to get my morning coffee.  I hadn't meant to write a movie review, or two.  I'm not sure what I had meant to do.

A few days ago I pulled a muscle in my ear, near where the jaw attaches to the skull, nothing has felt right since. There is excruciating occasional pain because I've done nothing at all, made no movement. It is inexplicable and I must somehow endure.

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"I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. " -Woody Allen, Annie Hall

"In various contexts I'd made it into a sort of private game to have a diabolic figure hanging around. His evil was one of the springs in my watch-works. And that's all there is to the devil figure in my early films.... Unmotivated cruelty is something which never ceases to fascinate me; and I'd very much like to know the reason for it. Its source is obscure and I'd very much like to get at it." - Ingmar Bergman, Torsten Manns Interview

(Ingrid Bergman)

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Baudrillard's "America"

(Mark Tucker, Limberjack)

Robert Hughes on Baudrillard's "America":

"As such, he has the badge of a distinctive jargon.  Jargon, native or imported, is always with us; and in America, both academe and the art world prefer the French kind, a thick prophylactic against understanding. We are now surfeited with mini-Lacans and mock Foucaults.  To write direct prose, lucid and open to comprehension, using common language, is to lose face."

and....

"Language does not clarify; it intimidates.  It subjects the reader to a rite of passage and extorts assent as the price of entry.  For the savant's thought is so radically original that ordinary words will not do. Its newness requires neologism; it seeks rupture, overgeneralization, oracular pronouncements and a pervasive tone of apocalyptic hype."

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How to get a job, how to keep a job

(Arthur Pivtorak)

Up late, many things to do today. I have a telephone interview.  It is an important one. I must project confidence, ability.  I must seem attractive to an employer.  How one goes about a thing I do not know.  I will probably never be good at job interviews. It is something I've come to accept.  I try not to be too relaxed, too much myself.  It is always a danger.

I just want to sleep, to fall back into bed and drift into myself, then away. 

"His eyebrows looked thick and heavy, they were thick and heavy. They wanted to slide down into his wet circular mouth and vanish but life wouldn't let them." - Bukowski

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the autumn wind still deceives me

(Arthur Pivtorak)

The image reminds me of the movie "Picnic at Hanging Rock." It is reminiscent of the young actress, the pretty one that goes missing, that wanders into the fearful unknown, seemingly unaware of the fear, drawn to it.  It is one of the most beautiful and haunting scenes of any movie ever made.  I could watch that scene over and over, I have.  It is a mystery about mysteries.  It is deeply frightening and imprecise and beautiful and lasting. 

Here is another poem to anger my readers.  It was written long ago about my mixed feelings for opiates.  

So be it.  

owning the grease, the yearn.

and who are we to say,

or love our ways.

ode to glissando burning, falling

what are we to think

of that gentle glowing know:

it works,

in dreams

it sinks

it turns

our charred 

learnings

it twists our scarred burns

ever returning, 

ever calling

   fall into my arm,

lover, light as leaves

breathe easy...

the autumn wind still deceives me

be still, hushed harm, 

it's just some dust.

float aside

abide,

for now,

its quiet climbing rust.

it is aroma, 

fragrance

oh, dear... its odor,

its power

we must not talk, 

never proclaim

thinkers think…

they say it's all the same.

no great minds 

have ever thought alike.

they only agree,

they say

let them talk

but let's need

it is agreed.

when are we to hide

when are we to mourn

we drink the things we drink.

owed to the seed, we adjourn.

when our lover is love,

the mourners mourn

ode to the grecian burn.

owed to the burning yearn.

s.c. 

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Imaginary Friends

It is an odd feeling, knowing that soon I'll be moving, not knowing exactly when, just that it is happening.  Picking up my life and moving it to another coast. 

I've lived in this apartment longer than any other place I've lived my entire life. 12 years.  It has become so much a part of me that I have a difficult time imagining elsewhere.  It is odd how a place begins to occupy you, becomes a part of your psyche, becomes the self.  

I walk around my apartment, looking at the things that have accumulated here, thinking of what the apartment has been for me, how it came to represent my idea of who I am.  I had slowly become a part of an older vanguard here, though admittedly not by much.  A friend of the village.  I have become a familiar face among many.

In New York an apartment might only be a guard against the noisy confusion, but the door locks and then you are on the slightly less noisy inside.  It can be as solitary as the self, at times.  The crazy, dirty, exciting world is just down the stairs.  Sometimes not even beyond the front door.  It both drifts and leaps in through the window with its urgency.

Sharing a small place with somebody else adds yet another dimension to it.  It is sometimes strange and difficult to let someone else inhabit and occupy that private space.  There was a long period of adjustment.  It took much perseverance to move stuff away to a storage unit, to padlock it up.

------

Well, I had woken up last night and jotted down those observations, sleep already gripping my thoughts, robbing me of clarity, purpose.  

I found the pictures, taken with an iphone, of the apartment when it was emptied to be painted, when Rachel moved back in, only a couple of years ago. Even that seems a lifetime away.  More years in distance than is possible, yet I know it is true.  

The years fly by but then events from the past don't seem as far away as they used to.  

Like an apartment, you don't realize how big it is until it is empty. Or small.

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The bar tab theory of the universe

I made the mistake of discussing matter tonight.  Not what matters, but matter.  I waxed semi-scientifically about the gap in meaning and understanding between the atomic and the biological realms.  I sensibly avoided the chemical, for lack of layman terms, and sufficient grasp therein. 

Cursed memories, ghosts.

I was at a bar, of course, in front of work friends.  I explained the durability of atoms and the impermanence of life.  I tried to explain my semi-liquid theories on god: dealing with gravity as the only known force that is always attractive, operating over all known distances... 

Etc.

Electromagnetism is where the phenomenon of people are.  It is the thing they can understand.  It is graspable, both literally and figuratively.  Alternately, I explained the strong nuclear principle as the binding force of the universe, also very god-like, as far as forces go.  It is god in the little details.

Well... I guess they all are when you think about them... forces.

Which I very sufficiently had not.

The weak nuclear principle got mentioned in passing also.

By the time I hit electro-magnetism my monologue had devolved into the very opposite of gravity, opposing at all known distances, especially close ones.

There weren't even any girls there. I still found a way of being a confused boor.  

It was as natural as supernovae and sand. 

Non-contact particle forces.  It is my generation's simplification, it seems.  

Everybody wants to talk about string theory, and elegance.  It has become the byword for the new gods, untouchable and with immense implications.  

Sure, why not?

When will I learn?  Ever?

I do so much better with nothing,  everyone understands the language of nothing, the modern poetry of physical resistance, the empty emptiness,  it is the gift of the literate 20 centuries,  or it was,  

I tremble for what used to be called the past,,,

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Dogs Anonymous

(Sabrina, a regular)

Near our apartment, on all sides, for years, there have been dog-friendly bars.  Lately the Health Department has taken up the crusade to rid the East Village of anything as dangerous as a bar that allows dogs inside of it.  Their reasoning is that these bars serve food. None of these bars actually serve food. But the ice that goes into drinks is considered food by the health department, though only when in its frozen form.  As everybody knows a dog is the greatest threat to ice, safety and health there has ever been and likely ever will be.

It is absurd, of course. Worst of all there is nothing anybody can do about it.  It is a no-win situation.  

Recently the two bars that we like the most both got complaints written about them to the health department for allowing dogs in.  It was uncanny how they both got complaints on the same week, even though they are separated by several blocks. The likely culprit seemed to be another bar owner rather than a citizen. Though I make no assumptions when it comes to the absolute possibility of a New York vigilante walking from bar to bar and writing letters of complaint.  Such is the razor-sharp civic pride of many living here.

It is a money-making scheme on the part of the city of course.  Once a bar has been warned then the fine after that is in the vicinity of $2000. A couple fines and then they suspend your occupancy license.  An incident again after you re-open and your liquor license is no more.  The bar is no more.  

Not that the E.V. couldn't stand to lose a few of the bars.  Just in the blocks surrounding our apartment there are an average of 5 bars per block, may of them obnoxious weekender bars. But, to each his own... I am not here to make judgements...

(Barkley, ordering a Guinness, his favorite)

It's not as if they were having problems with drunk dogs roaming the streets, liquored-up and looking for fights, as if they were in from Jersey for the weekend. These are respectable dogs who just want to unwind after a long day and they deserve that just as much as anybody else, maybe more.  Sure, a few of them might have drinking problems, some of them make uninvited advances from behind every now and then, all of them sniff each other's butts in greeting.  But those are just cultural differences.  

Underneath the fur they are pretty much all the same....

... except for this bug-eyed fellow below.  He saw that I had a camera and wouldn't leave me alone until I took his picture.

(Unknown Barfly)

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The Pikey Strikers

(the most talked about individual game of bowling ever)

I'm not trying to claim that I'm the best bowler who's ever walked the face of the earth. I'll let others make that decision.  After having not bowled for many years, close to 30, last night I did. The first game was unexpectedly average for such a long hiatus from the sport in which I possess so many natural gifts. But the second game... 5 strikes and 3 spares, two flubbed frames, one very sadly at the last.  After starting out the 10th frame with a strike and then not getting the spare is the only cruel twist of fate that kept my score below 200, which is a perfect score in bowling.

People will be talking about that last frame for centuries.  It will naturally occur any time people discuss the Tyson-Douglas fight, The Miracle on Grass: America knocking England out of the World Cup in 50', and of course... The Miracle on Ice, 1980 Olympics, America defeats the Soviet Union....

People are already referring to my game as The Wonder of Blunder, The Miracle on Nice, The Cheer for Beer..... Well, I just did anyway.

Ok, I can't go on.  I was clearly born for leisure sports but have betrayed my talents and my calling.  I have brought shame upon myself and my family and the great sport of bowling by not responding to "the great call."  What more can be said, really?

Here is the team that did nothing at all to aid in my victory. I definitely could have done it without them:

(The Pikey Strikers)

I'll let the sports writers debate it from here on out.  The comparisons to Earl Anthony are already rolling in.  I have changed the sport forever.  

Some of my friends have worried about me lately.  Some of my recent posts have had a dark edge to them, an anger almost.  I suppose when you have that one moment that you are at the top... No, I'm trying to change the subject here. Let me see....

Very few people can understand what it's like to view the world from that pinnacle, that summit of greatness.  Bjorn Borg, Neil Armstrong, Genghis Khan, George W. Bush, etc...  

One radio personality has already called me Julius Seizure. 

"A great height from which to view the rest of the poor world.  A great height from which to fall." - Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities

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The lodestar

I was walking through Soho yesterday and thinking of my time lived here in New York.  I looked down towards where they are rebuilding the World Trade Center area.  I remembered back to when I first moved to NYC, how I would use the WTC as a lodestar.  Once they came down I was disoriented in certain places downtown.  It was time adrift, the area had ripples of adjustment on every level. Eventually that all changed. Where the buildings were became an even stronger point of bearing than before, when they stood.  The surrounding area, the lights, the psychic attention that was paid to the place gave me a much stronger sense of place than the buildings themselves had.  The buildings were merely visual, the way that I used them, as a makeshift ground-based compass system.  They functioned as a sun-dial without need of the sun.  They say... that time is money, they were partially right.

People here are very protective and defensive of time, of the past, of their version of it.  All you have to do is make an observation about the neighborhood you live in, casually and in conversation, and it will provoke a re-telling of neighborhood history from an eyewitness perspective by somebody whose very credibility is derived from the number of years lived here, and their reminisces of various establishments and the years of their demise.  It's like talking to Jews about people who have passed away: they take much pride in knowing exact dates, locations and circumstances.   The original religious lineage seekers. 

To question a New Yorker's memory of events and the proceedings of their neighborhood is to bring into question their heritage, their genealogy, their very bloodline. It's like openly questioning whether a rapper grew up in a ghetto with a troubled family life or not.  It's like questioning Henry Rolllins's indubitable integrity.  It simply isn't done.  

One last thought on Hernia Rollins..  Am I  the only one that gets the feeling that much of his behavior and attitude is only compensatory?  He knows he can't get people to believe in him, at the level that he once believed they did, so he runs various causes up the credibility flagpole. Unsurprisingly there are no more black flags flying from that mast, that serves as the invisible and untouchable space to which we are not allowed access or criticism, his credible past....  With these various causes I'm sure he has some internal alignment with (gay rights, women's causes), and some relative principal to uphold. But it all just smacks of him trying to prove something to himself as much as it is is him trying to desperately sell something about himself.  Beyond the retired Mickey Rourke growth hormone vibe he's otherwise indistinguishable from Tom Green, just on opposite sides of complete and total humorlessness.

What is wrong with me... Henry Rollins is turning words into speech.  It is ART.  Nobody else is doing anything like it.  Spoken word is dense with implications. You try it if you think it's so easy....

God-damn it...  this written word stuff is hard... Moses must have felt like an idiot when he was chiseling out that first commandment... "no other gods before me"... It doesn't say you can't have other gods, just none before the big one that led them out of Egypt.  He was riding a wave of popularity at the time. Why don't people make more of this?  It's actually okay to have other gods.  It's part of the freakin' 10 commandos... It's the lead track on God's Greatest Hits...

#2 is absurd and self-defeating.  He is demanding to be idolized but requiring that we know nothing about the process. He's a bit Kim Jong Il here.

3 is creepy and there are laws against those type commandment makers now, for good reason. Jealous gods are unpredictable gods. Also, he waffles on whether it's 3 or 4 generations of pestilence and hatred. Show some balls, god-damn, let's settle on 5.  Locusts, mother-fuckers, I said LOCUSTS.... !!!!

Again, he makes illogical arguments with the next part.  He will love to a thousand subsequent generations of those who love him and follow his commandments.  That makes no mathematical sense and is impractical. You get the feeling the wine was gripping his reason about this time. Maybe he didn't plan on being god for nearly as long as he has been, because his sense of punishment and reward is all fucked up.  And besides we are not 1000 generations down the line and no family has had it so well with love from god. None.   This "commandment" was a lie.  At the very least it was exaggeration.  He was drinking, so it's understandable. 

He's like a rapper after that: "Know my name, you betta' recognize childrenz, recognize... 4-love, one-love, up-above, peace-outies..."

More drunkenness coming, but a slowed down sullen version, after the wave of energy had passed: Remember the sabbath, and mommy and daddy. Family is what matters most. That, and Sunday.

NO murder, adultery, stealing and lying. 7,8,9, possibly 10, but nobody's really counting.  Now those were all quite sensible and one gets the feeling he was holding those in his pocket. The ones he had rehearsed and was gonna drop if the crowd was drifting off.  Bullet point commandments and placed at a very sensible spot on the list.  He must have known he was going to drink before the show.

Now this last one... we are instructed to not covet the neighbor's finery:  his donkey, his house, his slaves. Not even his ox, with its fine bovine self.  That actually makes it around 15 or 16 commandments now, by the way.  He crammed several into this last one.

All good advice, beware keeping up with the joneses, etc.  

But he snuck in a little drunken reactionary morality at the last second, hoping we wouldn't notice... we are told not to covet our neighbor's wife.   Tricky one.  What if we just moved to a different neighborhood first?  Then, by definition, he wouldn't be our neighbor any more.  As long as we still respected his donkeys and male slaves, and the other stuff, right?  Maybe gave some flirty eye-time to his oxen, but nothing serious, just an honest admiring peek.  

What an asshole.  He acts like stealing somebody's wife is wrong. Has he no sense of genuine love?  Or sex? Has he not read Flaubert?  That's just the way it works out sometime.  

And THAT is supposed to be a sin...?

And YES, slavery was not only accepted by god, it was instituted into his most respected compilation album, a distillation of his almighty great wisdom.  Suck on that christians.

Those were some really fucked up times. It's a good thing that most of those people are dead now.  I'm sure glad Hemorrhoid Rollins wasn't around back then.  He would not have gotten along with god, or Moses, at all. Imagine his rage when he found out that they were doing their own version of spoken word, up on the mountain, and using stone tablets in their act, burning bushes.... what gimmickry....   

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Time Warner Cable of NYC, Pt. 2

(Norm Parkinson)

I have had a New York based road-runner email address for 12 years.  It was an easy address for people to remember: q6@nyc.rr.etc... I only give it out here in partial form because those useless money-grubbers are canceling it after 12 years simply because I am moving. There were no options for me to have the emails forwarded to another address, even for a time, or to pay to continue the webmail based portion of the service.  Nothing.  Very soon I will lose that account and all of the years of contacts I have made through it.  I guess I've got my work cut out for me.  I'm going to email my entire address book an email update.  

Those type mass emails are always annoying and useless.  I don't know why I feel this way.  I just do. I just get annoyed that somebody that I don't like has thought enough of me to try and have me update my contact for them.  It's presumptuous. 

Ok, enough about those ingrates.  They're probably testing spam emails on animals right now. I told the tech support guy that the "road-runner" mascot was quite fitting considering their service options.

I had another pleasant encounter with a Soho street artist yesterday. He screamed at me not to take a picture of the "art" he was trying to do commerce with, which was blocking a doorway.  I told him that I was in public and could take a picture of whatever I wanted to. He said that I could at least ask first. I said, "Why? you didn't ask if you could scream at me first. Asking only supports the false assertion that I need to.  I don't."  He was pretty close to me so I asked him to back away from me, that his behavior was threatening.  It's illegal to physically threaten people, I reminded him.  I told him to stop pointing at my eyeball or I would have to seek legal intervention, or something even more unpleasant.

Now, I would never call the cops.  They are useless and mostly make matters worse in situations where they are not needed, and definitely do where they are needed.  But it occurred to me to ask this guy if he had a license to sell any of this stuff.  He lost his mind, what little of it he had left to lose anyway.  The effect was immediate.  His eyes bulged and changed to the color of undercooked steak.  He entered a apoplectic state, a sort of Tourette's Syndrome of artistic freedoms and rights.  When he calmed down a little bit, but still not quite back to his merely physically threatening state, I asked him if he considered photography an art form too.  His mind stabbed me repeatedly in the neck and abdomen with a Rambo knife.  I'm pretty certain he would have actually done so if he would have have something handy to do so with.  I could see his mind racing towards the idea of nearby weapons.  Sharp objects in the employ of artistry that could be used for evil rather than commerce.

I decided to not let this issue rest so easily.  I was on my lunch break and trying to relax from the many pressures of my job and this was one way that I was determined to accomplish that meager goal.  I asked him if I displayed my images of his artwork here on the street, right next to where he was, but sold mine for much less, would that be okay with him?  You see, I had learned to ask first.... I went on to repeat some of his sentence fragments about artistic freedoms and rights, but without the spittle missiles, and invectives.

He gave up, sort of.  He walked quickly away, though not directionlessly so.  He walked towards his bag of supplies with seeming aim and purpose. I envisioned either the barrel of a gun being the next thing I took a picture of, or myself bleeding to death on Broome St. from repeated knife wounds to the inner eyeballs.  He had a mustache so who knows what implement of destruction he might have produced for my undoing.  It could have been a scythe, or maybe an antique ceramic dagger, or a rusty caltrop.  Who knew what surprise awaited me. The mysterious world of violent mustache crime has long been a subject of academic study.  I opted not to participate further in any field research on the matter. It was only my lunch break...

I decided to move on and get a bag of potato chips... to live to art another day, etc.

Below is the piece of art that he was stridently protecting, reprinted here without permission but rather with artistic freedom.  

Below that is an out of focus picture of the artist that I took as he was attempting to take a picture of me.  I told him that I do only nude action shots.  

I believe the "TM" from the image below stands for "Tourette's, Man" but I can not verify this.

(Shotgun House, TM)

(photo by Sean Cusick)

(Coprolaliac)

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Heading Aum

No more crazy talk.  That is my new mantra.  I have been repeating it all morning.  I know that a mantra probably shouldn't have the "z" and "t" and "k" sounds in it, but what can one do really? Once one is verbally committed to transforming then one must follow their inner-instincts, the logic of the soul must remain unfettered by actualities.  

I must be hurtling towards a spiritual movement, a revelation; as if I'm in a taxi rushing cross-town, heading Aum...

No. I am rushing but just to keep up with the life that is suddenly forming around me.  As we prepare to move to the west coast suddenly there are thousands of things that need responding to that had been, up until this point, fine as they were.  Nothing is no longer fine where it is, where it was.  All things need tending to.  The focus is on where they will be.  There is a heightened sense of all things in life.  A sudden need to attend to things. 

Something very strange has been happening to me lately...  I am a very prompt person, very rarely late. It is a strange quirk of character.  Because those who know me, and my other eccentricities, would not normally guess that I'm prompt, it's counter-intuitive.  But I have missed 3 doctors appointments in the last 2 weeks. I won't bore you with the details but I must assume that each instance was my fault. It has left me dumbfounded.  I'm either there on the wrong day, or at the wrong office, or just unable to get out of the door of the apartment in time to make the appointment.  Suddenly it is as if all things need my immediate attention where they could go years, perhaps forever, without my attention before.  So I keep making the new appointments and then missing them.  

Perhaps I am on the verge of spiritual awakening...  Perhaps this is what it feels like. How would I know, really?  My soul dropped out of high school and never went on to get its G.E.D.  It is the black sheep of the family.  Or would that be black lamb?  See!  I'm not sure.  I have an underdeveloped soul.  It started smoking at a very early age and it stunted its growth.  It was susceptible to advertisements for cigarillos. Only recently has it started drinking coffee. But that was just to make up for lost time.

Ok, my wife just came home.  I must return to the world of normalcy. 

We'll see....

(Seanvard Munch, pronounced "munch")

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I've found the guy that will one day kill me....

Holy Shit!  

I came home from work and found this comment waiting for me.  I don't know if this scares all of you as much as it scares me.  I would assume not.  But this is the guy that is going to one day hasten my personal assembly with Jesus, my cadaver-Christ-conference,  my crucify on high, as they say.  

This is a person that is so on fire for Jesus that he wants me to get on the express lane to Hallelujah, with his guiding trigger fingers hastening my departure.  The fast track to judgment day.

"Fix yourself first"

  

Why are christians so freakin' creepy?  I'm sure this guy is just a normal misguided fan of hardcore punk rock, most of which sucks terribly, it's just unlistenable bilge.  But he is going to hunt me down and kill me, possible himself shortly thereafter.  I can tell.  I have a special sense for these things.  He'll want to explain to Jesus why he did what he did, as soon as possible, and ask for forgiveness in person, assuming all along the big J.C. will understand, maybe even thank him for listening to, and acting upon, his special message...  

Many are called but few are armed...

He will make me confess that Henry Rollins is a man of genuine probity before we ascend to the great shooting range in the sky.

Listen... please don't kill me.  Jesus would not want that, Henry Rollins does not want that, I do not want that.  If you kill me Jesus might make you spend all of eternity with ABBA.  

Henry Rollins already had a friend with the initials "JC" killed right in front of him.  Do the math... listen to reason, not the whispers of Smith & Wesson...

Ok, again, one last time, please don't kill me.

I know these albums might be cliche by many people's standards, but the albums of "hardcore" that I once really liked were The Minutemen "Double Nickels On The Dime", Husker Du "Zen Arcade", Bad Brains "Bad Brains" and "I against I", and to a lesser degree Black Flag "Damaged", Minor Threat "Out Of Step" and some other albums that I can't think of right now.... Oh yeah, The Replacements "Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash..."

It's late, who knows, I've probably forgotten my favorite album of all time.  

Who can blame me?  Death is thundering down on me, almost unannounced. 

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Henry Rollins is an aneurism for Hell Inn, Sorry....

(Henry Rollins, meathead)

I found an email with a bunch of old poems in it, hence the recent posts.  I was disappointed to read most of my old poems. They were very easily recognized as imitations of various other poets, mostly Bukowski.  Some lines were stolen almost word for word, unashamedly.  I'll claim that is the nature of poetry, etc.  There were only a small handful that stood out on their own.  I once read that a poet never finishes a poem he just abandons it. I just did a search to find out who said it, it seems to have either been Valery or Verlaine. Valery seems more plausible. 

I made a joke about having "POETRY in my heart" in the comments section at Selavy, telling him that he was a stinkin' hippie farmer.  He enthusiastically agreed, and went on to further elucidate that it is the same type poetry as Henry Rollins has in his heart. This is funny, of course. I'm sure he knows that I execrate Rollins.  His tired ranting and posturing as a petrified punk intellectual would be tedious if I paid any attention to it.  He's an angry old man, nothing more.  I'm sure he must have some insights but I can hardly hear them, or care.  I can never make it past his angry flatulent tirades.  

I saw a youtube video where he gets into a one-man insult-fest with some girls in a record store because they committed the crime of recognizing him.  It's important to note that he had a camera on him inside this record store, as he was being interviewed for a television show.  All they did was acknowledge him and this was enough for him to rant about the evils of being young, and the potentially sinful act of wearing t-shirts, or having a family that possibly believes in them and wants them to be educated.  All sins in Rollins twisted view of life and living, because only his authenticity is genuine.  Henry Rollins is a rap-ist. He 's not a rapper. He just seeks that level of unquestioned authenticity.  He's just a white guy forcing his individualism down the ears of anybody that's still listening.

Heminen Rollins, Rap-ist.

I wish one of the girls would have maced the dumb fucker and then filed harassment charges.  Let me see if I can find the video... here it is. 

(Henry Rollins, discussing music)

He berates a group of people sitting in the record store/coffee shop for recognizing him and his work, assumes they're being derogatory and launches a counter-attack based on his paranoia and supposedly injured pride.  One of the girls even states that maybe she doesn't want to be in his video. This doesn't stop him. He turns the incident into an opportunity to flex his anger at others he feels threatened by.  He's a spud.  He's a real spoken-word rappist.

I'm sure he stands up for righteousness, but there seems to be nothing at all subtle about him.  He's like a Spalding Gray with retard strength.  One lonely Beastie he be... Jesus, he must be close to my age, maybe a few years older than me. How shameful.  That is no way for a grown man to act.  Maybe he had just gotten a hip replacement and he was in a fighting mood. Maybe he was fighting off pain killers with pain.

Ok, I've exhausted my feelings about Henry Rollins for now.  Who knows maybe one day soon I'll be singing his praises from the tree tops, or jail cell...

People have made comparisons between myself and Henry Rollins for many years, especially when I have my head shaved, and start talking at people rather than with them.  It troubles me, but what can one do?  The more I deny or resist it then the more it will stick.  I do love to rant....

(Henry Rollins, pissed off about caring so much)

Selavy knows that I am disgusted and frightened by age, his mostly. Mine also, but to a much lesser degree.  Old people are disgusting.  I am in constant fear that they will touch me and I'll become old also. Well, older anyway.  I guess it's because I never knew my grandparents.  They were all dead before I was born, or died as quickly as they could after that.  My mother died before she was old and my father is getting old now.  In fact, he has arrived. I suppose he's alright.  He is shrinking up at such an astonishing rate that I'm certain one day he's just going to be gone, nobody will know what happened, like one of those cats that are born bald.  But I'll know...  He will have turned into 12 gold coins and be hidden under the nearest bridge, possibly because a dwarf touched his forehead with his magic digit.  

It's science.

No, I promised I wouldn't talk like that any more.  He's old and I love him much.  It has been a long road getting to this point and I should show more respect to the actualities of it.  I have not been the easiest son to love.  I am a parent's wet nightmare.  I'm sure he has woken up in the night weeping for me, unsure of every aspect of my character and life, regretting the missed opportunities to steer and guide my life in a better, more substantial way. 

But I do love him. 

There, I said it.  That was partially to keep my wife happy.  I know that midget, retard-strength, magic gold coin talk does not make her very happy.  She always just closes her eyes and firmly says three times, "Stop it!"... It must be some esoteric magical incantation because it works, magically so.  I'll stop talking but am still overcome with an occasional giggle from within, bubbles of the stuff, gifts from orpheus.... though I can still hear the echoes of Stop it! in the room....

Magic sure is strange stuff.... I should see what my Facebook psychic/friends have to say about it.

(H. Rollins, discussing magic boobs)

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hungry earth dream

twice this night I knelt in silence,
asking the sleeping earth to show me
a new and benevolent mercy.

a kinder way of living,
a more composed and patient passion.

twice I slipped from the pliant hands of the dream,
the neutral breath of nature leaving me humbled

indifferent yet itinerant spirit
please slow this human life

gently gypsy, wander less



s.c.  

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