Thanks for Nothin’

Some people have a penchant, a drive, and instinct–if not an overt desire–for self-destruction.  you’ve felt it poking your in the gut, gnawing on your brain, moving through your veins like a rodent in a drainpipe.  Somehow, though, you’ve never been able to act on it.  Not exactly.  Not completely.  You walk by those tall buildings and gun shops, and the notions flash like sparks. Never been able to do it slowly either.  Never had a taste for tobacco.  You can deal with the two or three yearly hangovers, but not much more.  Cocaine, heroin, speed–they frighten you.

You do the nine to five, but life never feels exactly conventional.  Something is missing, and it’s not just financial success.  You’ve never really felt plugged in to sting of Christmas lights called the middle class, which is something slightly scarier than hard drugs.

Steal This Song

Please listen to and download this song. I’ve been playing this for a couple of months with my band, but I decided to do a solo arrangement of of. I transposed it from E to A, and decided to do it fingerstyle. If you enjoy it, feel free to share it. I know that it’s a pretty rough recording. It was done with no overdubs and only one stereo track.

Click on the downward arrow on the right side of the music player to download.

Still,

…the unseasonably warm weather.  I’ve been running the air conditioner, set it at 80.  It’s finally cooling off enough to open the window.  I’m in my office because it is the only place I can escape the assault of TV noise, the ceaseless back-and-forth of reprimands, and sputtering of sentence fragments and microsermons.

The leaves on my mandevillas are turning yellow, and fewer red flowers bloom.  Soon I’ll take the hanging baskets off their hooks and find a place to protect them from the winter.  Come spring, I’ll hang them again, hoping the woody vines will gift more leaves and flowers.  The crickets still chirp.  The silver crescent moon dangles in the sky. The softball fields are devoid of the usual Saturday night batters, fielders and screaming spectators.  The train crossing bell rings in the distance.

A paring knife and an empty bottle of stout.  A plastic yellow guitar string winder and an overdue dog-eared paperback.  The small black fan hissing, blades spinning and spinning and spinning so much like the days and seasons and years.  Poems run through the blood in the brain.  Poems find their way to the paper, or they get pushed into the void.

Melodies curl around the fragments of text, chords are strummed, arpeggiated with skin and nail, decorated with suspensions and grace notes.  Songs came along when you didn’t have a guitar in hand.  The UPS guy knocked on your door when you were not at home to receive the package.

Technology disrupts.  Robots displace humans.  The internet makes us stupid.  The dots on the screen present the deception of unity and order.  Words on the page present the deception of meaning. It is, it is…

All in our heads.

Blood and cells and strands of protein present the deception of permanence.  The rust eats the metal; the wood rots and turns to dust.  The stone crumbles and the creaking gate comes loose from its hinge.  Man and woman loosen their interlaced fingers and part at the fork in the road.  The fan blades stop spinning.  The air seems heavy and still.

~:~

The mandevillas will flower next year, and maybe the next.  The broom will sweep away the yellow leaves.  The silent strings will resonate for a moment.

~:~

The Dark Star Orchestra is coming this week.  I’d like to go check them out.  I missed all the good shows in September.  And there were a bunch of them: Gillian Welsh, Merle Haggard/Kris Kristofferson, Furthur…

Too Much of a Good Thing is Not Enough

Mid-afternoon.  You head to the TRAX station to take the train to The City Library.  The sun is not overtly oppressive, but it does burn with a dry heat that reminds you that you live in a desert.  The city has cleaned up the graffitti on the white plastic fence along the walkway to the station.  Nobody has bothered to tag it since.  They also pulled the thistles that were nearing six-feet tall.  First train to arrive is the Blue Line, headed downtown and the Gateway Mall.  Take it, and you’ll have to get off at Courthouse Station an walk a couple of blocks.

The library is an oasis of life in a city that dies on Sunday and resurrects on Monday.  You return the book, and meander through the first floor browsing section.  You consider buying a coffee, but don’t because you’d rather spend your money on beer.

Up the great glass elevator to the second floor.  You scrunch your face at the body odor.  In such close quarters with people who haven’t bathed since the last full moon.  You browse the fiction despite already having more than enough to read.  Old habit, old habit.  Gravity tugs at your kneecaps and the arches of your feet.  The clientele at the computer banks appears shabby as usual.  Dirty baseball caps and droopy mustaches checking e-mails and Facebook, playing digital chess.

But you notice that people who look vaguely middle class occupy many of the colorful vinyl chairs.  Not only that: they are reading books.  The economy is bad.  The library is free.  A frail, twisted man with baggy denim shorts and a quasi-Hare Krishna haircut (sides shaved, crooked tuft on the dome, short braid in back) ambles through the stacks like a worn-out windup toy.

Outside, Phoebus has turned up the heat.  You almost break a sweat, but instead of waiting for the train, you ramble through the desolate downtown sunday streets.  At the Seven-Eleven they sell PBR tallboys for $0.20 more than anywhere else in town.  Premium prices for bums who don’t have the stamina to walk four blocks to the liquor store. You buy two and stuff them in your backpack. There’s a black guy with short dreadlocks and a rolling carry-on bag who looks like he’s waiting for a flight.  He stands near the counter, but buys nothing.

The sign at the Central Christian Church proclaims the following aphorism: “He who angers you, controls you.”  The converse is also true, you think: “He who controls you, angers you.” What would Pastor Hank think about that?

This area is a bastion of blight and second-hand mid-century funk.  The coffee shop is empty and pitiful, open and losing money.  The art galleries are closed.  The tropical plant store sells palms and orchids, but not on the lord’s day.  Antique and thrift stores spin through various states of rise and decline.  ”Closed on Sundays.”  ”Space Available for Rent” echoes sign after sign after sign.

A record store is open.  The only thing open.  You opt not to enter, because you no longer own a phonograph.   Haven’t for years.

The occasional car hisses by.  A few occupy the diagonal parking spots in the middle of Broadway.  Their owners are likely sitting in the mostly empty movie theater, you think.

You walk back to the Gallivan Trax Station.  A Blue Line train comes shortly after you arrive.  You take a seat among unemployed middle-aged men, and lovely female cyclists.

Time to head home.

Back in the Groove

Again, I slept in until about seven this morning.  Sunday.  The white light was soft again, framing the blue mountains.  It seemed right to make a change, albeit a minor one.  I decided to shave off my beard.  Once in a while it is good to remember what you face looks like.  Here in Utah, facial hair is a marker, or it can be.  The Mormon prophets stopped wearing facial hair in the 1950′s.  What with their communitarian history, they probably didn’t want to be labeled as communists.  Those of us (men) who (no longer) want to associate ourselves with the dominant culture grow beards.  For women, the facial hair is not usually a viable option.  They must go with sleeveless or strapless dresses, body piercings or conspicuous tattoos. That’s not to say that there are not Mormons with beards, body piercings or tattoos.

Indeed, there are believers who would also like to disassociate themselves from the culture.  They don’t want to be labeled as a member of the herd, or, more aptly, the hive.

Sunday mornings are peaceful here.  In the distance, the steady white noise from the traffic on 3900 South is quiet enough that the chirping of the birds may be heard.  The growls and grunts and groans of semi trucks and motorcycles that make up the weekday morning soundscape are absent.

Justin, the little boy next door is outside playing his harmonica.  A man after my own heart.

Yesterday I was looking for something to read.  I picked up a paperback copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang that I bought a couple of years ago but never read.  I vaguely remember reading it when I was younger, but that might be a false memory.  I’m a few chapters in, and enjoying every page.  What a delightful band of eco-terrorists!  I don’t know that I’m a fellow traveler, philosophically.  Abbey had a way with words, and a way of describing the regional landscape.  God bless him.  I don’t think that blasting bridges or dismantling heavy machinery will save the local lands, or the planet.

The way I figure it, our days as a species are numbered.  I hope I’m wrong.  In the meantime, we’ll live our lives the best we can.

We’re a few days into autumn.  The leaves on my sun parasol plants are turning yellow.   I assumed that they were annuals, but maybe they will come back next year.  Excuse my ignorance on botany and many other subjects.

The trees in the park across the street are still green; no fall colors yet.  The sky has been clear, and days have been warm.  I like this time of year.  It’s not quite cool enough in the daytime yet.  October is perhaps the best month.

Getting the blogging mojo back feels good.  I would like to wake up and do it every morning, but alas, I don’t think I could construct a complete sentence in the Monday through Friday 5 AM blear.  Thus, it is an activity confined to weekends, and the occasional weekday evening when I’ve got the mental stamina to write about everything that comes to mind, and nothing in particular.

~:~

As I mentioned, yesterday I was looking for something to read.  I went to the City Library website, and searched the e-book catalog.  It’s a service through overdrive.  The selection is disappointing.  Fantasy, romance, bad mystery, self-help, etc.  Almost nothing remotely literary.  I did download The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell.  I read a couple of chapters, but I think I’ve burnt out on Scandinavian crime.  I’ve had enough mutilated bodies for the time.

I still like the idea of books as things rather than software.  Have I said that before?  I gave up on music as objects when LP’s went out of vogue in the early 90′s, or that’s when I found out that it happened.  I returned to the states after spending two years in Venezuela, and there were no records in the record stores.  Only dreaded cassette tapes and overpriced CDs.

As a teen, I loved record covers.  The artwork, the notes on the inner sleeve.  I especially loved the fold-out covers that came with double albums.  Shrink them down to the size of a CD cover, and they lose their appeal.  Thank God that vinyl is coming back.  I no longer have any records, though.  They were lost in moves or donated to thrift stores.  I guess there is no going back to analog for me, but it pleases me to know that other people are spinning wax.

When I was a teen, an album was a rare and precious thing.  Now, my music collection is so bloated that I have dozens or maybe hundreds of albums that I’ve only heard once or twice.  Too many choices.  Not enough time.  If I had all of that on vinyl, I would have to rent a storage unit to keep it all in.  I would rather buy music electronically and store it on a hard drive.  Convenience over quality is the American way of life.

Thoughts on Music and Work Space

White light coming up above the mountains. A cup of coffee with a cloudy swirl of frothed milk.  James McMurtry playing through a pair of ear buds.  The balcony door is open and the curtain sways and dances as the breeze pushes through.  As usual, the family is all asleep at 8:00 on a Saturday morning.  Weekend mornings give me a chance to have the living room to myself.  I’m typing this on my wife’s laptop.

I thought about the farmer’s market.  I haven’t been at all this year as I don’t much care for the crowds.  Years ago, we lived down by the Gateway Mall.  The market was a ritual.  We go over, get a cup of coffee, buy something to eat.  The kids would play on the playground surrounded by an inner ring of yuppie parents and an outer ring of bums who seemed unbothered and unfazed by their temporary displacement.

I don’t get down to that area of town much anymore.  Pioneer Park has cleaned up somewhat. We were down there for the Lupe Fiasco concert a few weeks ago.  My oldest daughter wanted to go.  50,000 people.  I was the only one there with a cowboy hat on.

What to do?  I had a bundle of papers to grade this weekend, but I accidentally left them at work.  Or maybe it wasn’t an accident.  Maybe on a deeper level I knew I’d never get to them.  I have a guitar student coming over this morning.  It’s been a while since I taught guitar.  My style is pretty traditional: blues and country with some occasional jazz lines thrown in to spice things up a bit.  Open chords with a few extensions.  An extra 9th or 11th thown in.  Some dropped 5ths and augmented 9ths.   Love those funky 13th chords.

I like the boomy bottom end and heavy strings of an acoustic/electic dreadnought.  Plug it through a few subtle effects into an acoustic guitar amp.  Step on the Ibanez Tube Screamer for a solo.  Just enough overdrive dialed in for some extra sustain and boost to cut through the mix.

“Traditional with a post-modern edge.”

I think of a song as it’s most elemental parts: chords, melody, lyrics.  The rhythm and meter that you use, the way you phrase it, the breaks for solos, the way you use dynamics.  That’s all up to you.  Rearrange it. Turn it upside-down. Put a new face on it.  Stretch the melody out like taffy.  Throw an extra measure in here and there.  A few passing chords.  Forgot the lyrics? No problem.  Sing whatever comes to mind.

A lot of people don’t seem to get that, and it’s hard to get them to wrap their head around it.  Also, it flies in the face of intellectual property rights.  In the end, the creative process will prevail.

I’ve got to clean up my office.  It’s usually in a state of chaos.  Guitars, drums, books, fragments of used guitar strings here and there.  There’s a hole in the door that can’t be patched.  I’ve got to get a new one.  Nicks in the paint on the walls.  computer disks and open letters strewn about.  No art on the walls.  Inspiration comes hard in a haphazard and cluttered environment.

Comp Day

After putting in some long days this week for parent-teacher conferences, we got our negotiated comp day today.  I slept in (getting up at seven instead of five, my normal hour), fired up the stove-top espresso maker, had my coffee, and turned on the Roku.  I flipped through the instant streaming movies on Netflix, but nothing really caught my eye.  I wanted to watch a detective show, and I have several in my queue, but TV just didn’t feel right–not in the morning.

I ended up finishing a novel, Snow Angels by James Thompson.  He’s an American ex-pat living in Finland.  An American Nordic crime novelist.  After that, I just ended up sleeping off the day.  I was tired from the work week.

At about three, I woke up, played though a few tunes to warm up for my gig at Moochie’s tonight.  My first solo gig in almost two years.  I was going to restring the Dobro, but I couldn’t find the motivation.  Dobro sounded fine plugged in, although the strings we a bit old.

Here I am.  My wallet is full of ones and fives from the tips I earned, and I finished half of my foot-long roast beef sandwich that Moochie’s gives me for compensation, and gave the other half to my daughter.  It’s late.  I’m tired.  But I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.

Truth is…

Summer is winding down.  Gigs out on the patios of the restaurants and cafés where we play are getting a little cold.  Money is tight.  I used to stop for a few street tacos or a hamburger on my frequent trips to the City Library.  Now, I just do what I need to do and go home with an empty stomach.  Yesterday, while checking in some books after getting a haircut, I thought that packing a ham sandwich would have been a good idea.  Hindsight is 20/20.

Sunday is a great day for a haircut, but, unfortunately, none of the Indy barber shops that I like to frequent were open.  I ended up taking the TRAX to SuperCuts.  The stylist was friendly and attractive; she did a nice job on my hair.  I paid cash and left a tip from the tip money that I earned the night before at one of the mentioned patio gigs.  I occasionally think that money might be karmic.

What is there to say?  A long week ahead.  A meeting before work today, and one after work also.  I walked four blocks to the grocery store and picked up a twelve of PBR: The beer of choice in times of austerity.  Olympia is also good, but it is essentially PBR in an orange box.  Both brewed by Pabst.

I do like the dark mornings, although after 12 years of getting up early, I’ll never get used to it.  Have I made that complaint before?  Today, gravity was pulling at my bones especially hard.  I felt it as I walked down the hill to the grocery store, thinking the walk would make me feel better.

It didn’t.

Some superficial good news: The Utes beat the Cougars 24-10.  A blowout.  BYU got the smackdown on their home field.  I pretend to feel good about it, but it doesn’t matter.  Just a football game.  I wore my bright red shirt with a black tie to show my Utah pride.  I smiled and joked about it, but really, it made no difference.

What keeps me going?  Playing music, reading fiction.  I do have a good time working with my students, but it grinds me down.  Teaching is a tough profession.  Being constantly targeted by right-wing politicians and corporate media doesn’t make it any easier.  I’ve been wanting to record some songs for an album.  Nothing fancy.  One stereo track.  No overdubs.

Truth is, I have no love of recording.  I don’t enjoy it, but I need something to sell at gigs.  People ask all the time: Do you have a CD?

I’m afraid to invest money in something that I might not be proud of.  Stressing about studio time is bound to put a damper on the requisite passion for laying it down.  I have a digital recorder though.  I could make a few bucks by putting together something inspired, although Lo-Fi it would be.

Truth is, I’m still looking for transcendence. It seems to be in short supply these days, or if it’s not, I’m having a hard time getting dialed in.  Sometimes it just happens.  You see the leaves turning colors, or you hear a movement from a Bach cello suite at just the right time of day.

It just hits you, all of a sudden.  Luck plays a part, but it’s mostly hard work. You have to get yourself ready for when it comes.  I’m not really disposed to hard work right now.

Friday Alone

A couple of days ago, my wife and daughters flew to Brazil for the summer.  Due to a misconnect, they had to be rerouted from Atlanta to Detroit, Detroit to Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo to Belo Horizonte.  Departing from Salt Lake City, the trip made a kind of miserable zigzag that no traveler wants to endure.  I expected to relish the month and a half of solitude that the trip affords me (although after everything was paid for, little else can be afforded.)  Curiously, I’ve felt little motivation to do anything useful.

I woke up, made coffee, and neglected to do some work for some online classes that I am taking.  My procrastination entailed watching several episodes of Hoarders.  That’s a bad sign, since I usually hate TV.  At about 4 in the afternoon, I did motivate myself out of the house to the TRAX station.  I took the tracks to a music store where I bought some guitar strings for a gig tomorrow night.  I then walked to the liquor store, bought three bottles of Epic Galway Porter, and a bottle of Irish Creme.  After returning home on the TRAX train, I made three Irish Car Bombs and watched three more episodes of Hoarders.  Feeling inspired, I cleaned up my office/music studio, going through desk drawers and boxes, and tossing a bunch of stuff I didn’t know I had.  Old receipts, spare parts from IKEA, 10-year-old software CD’, dead batteries.  You get the picture.

Fortunately, I’m not a hoarder.  I’m just a clutterer.  The difference is that you don’t feel emotional attachment to the stuff that is lying around, but you do forget to throw it away.  After an hour or so of going through junk drawers, I feel much better, and will probably not make any more Irish Car Bombs.  Not tonight.

I do miss my family, though.  Loneliness gets old after a while.

The Best Way to Channel Strong Emotion

Paint a picture or write a song.  Since I can’t paint:

Fall

I’m not gonna fall for your poisonous seductions
I’m not gonna snag in the barbed wire of your voice
You can’t lose me now in your enchanted forest
Cause, Baby, I know I’ve got a choice

My shadows comin’ up, but I try to keep him down
And that’s when I start to lose control
My shadow’s comin’ up, but I try to keep him from
escapin’ from the cracks that line my soul

I’m gonna let my demon out, I’m gonna take him to the circus
And, baby, you’re invited too.
I’ll lift my hands up high, ask the universe to preserve us
Cause now, that’s the best that I can do

The hail keeps coming down, now it’s tearing up my flowers
The weather god will flash his wicked grin
The bicycle tire is flat, and all the spokes are broken
But that’s OK, cause it only takes me where I’ve been

This is unrelated, but I wanted to post this reading by E.E. Cummings: