This Is Not Your Father's American Nihilist

It's Been a Horrible Year for My GTR Heroes

The great Malian griot (and king of the BULLSHIT electric gtr)

Ali Farka Touré (1939 - March 7, 2006) has passed away though his music never will.




. . . I just hope wherever the king of SKRONK Arto lindsay is he's doing well, same goes for that living saint Fred Frith (I'm sure he's giggling like a school girl though)!

Maybe I Should Just Rename the Blog?

. . . more where that came from; you yes you

MMM Kidneys!

Joyces' doodle of Leopold Bloom and the first line of the "Odyssey" in Greek

Not only is today Candlemas and Pete SEEN his Shadow day but on this day five years before the first ever observation of Groundhog Day, the Great James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born!

Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.



- Joyces' portrait by the great Bernice Abbott

It's rare for me w/ a book but I can trace the exact sentence that gave birth to a twelve plus year obsession. I can't really remember a time when I didn't know about "Ulysses" or didn't want to read it some day. I finally got my copy (shamefully liberated from the high school library, THANKS Paul! where it had been moldering untouched since 1976!) around 1990. But it languished on my shelves for many years, I would occaisionaly dig it out and leaf thru it reading passages here and there at random but they always made little sense. until sometimes early in 1994 when i read these sentences:

Mr Bloom read again: The beautiful woman...

Warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yielded amid rumpled clothes: whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils arched themselves for prey. Melting breast ointments (for him! for Raoul!). Armpits' oniony sweat. Fishgluey slime (her heaving embonpoint!). Feel! Press! Chrished! Sulphur dung of lions!

Young! Young!

and really the exact sentence that set the hook (for some unknown reason?) was -

"Armpits' oniony sweat."

I knew what that meant. and quickly after reading that I was on my thru my first reading of the book that's pretty much ruined any other work of fiction for me. not that i've really tried all that much but i've found no other book as real or filled w/ as much humanity (good, bad, and/or ugly) as "Ulysses".

. . . And what may be my favorite sentence in all of "Ulysses":

"The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit."

I know what that means.

"It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably everyday for lack of what is found there." -- William Carlos Williams

the KING is dead long live the KING

Derek Bailey

Jan 29, 1930 - Dec 25, 2005



Ten fingers conceal an orchestra

" . . . Anybody who knows me knows this story."

It.....was.....after.....I.....got.....to.....Boston
..............that.....I.....went.....into.....the
.anechoic.....chamber...............at.....Harvard
..University.
.Anybody.....who.....knows.....me...............knows
....this.....story.
....I.....am.....constantly.....telling.....it.
..................................Anyway,
...............in.....that.....silent.....room,
......................I.....heard.....two.....sounds,
.............................one.....high...............and
.....one.....low.
.Afterward.....I.....asked.....the.....engineer.....in
.....charge...............why,.....if.....the.....room
.....was.....so.....silent,
..I.....had.....heard.....two.....sounds.
............................He.....said,
..............“Describe.....them.”...............I
.did..........................................He.....said,
...............................“The.....high.....one
...........was.....your.....nervous.....system
.........in.....operation.
.............The.....low.....one................was
.your.....blood.................in......circulation.” -- John Cage

NEITHER

to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow
--
from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself by way of neither
--
as between two lit refuges whose doors once neared gently close, once away turned from gently part again
--
beckoned back and forth and turned away
--
heedless of the way, intent on the one gleam or the other
--
unheard footfalls only sound
--
till at last halt for good, absent for good from self and other
--
then no sound
--
then gently light unfading on that unheeded neither
--
unspeakable home

- the libretto to "Neither" by Samuel Beckett

No problem can be solved. When a situation becomes a problem, it becomes insoluble. Problems are by definition insoluble. No problem can be solved, and all solutions lead to more problems. - William S. Burroughs

MERRY XMASS

Four o'clock in the afternoon

and I didn't feel like very much.
I said to myself, "Where are you golden boy,
where is your famous golden touch?"
I thought you knew where
all of the elephants lie down,
I thought you were the crown prince
of all the wheels in Ivory Town.
Just take a look at your body now,
there's nothing much to save
and a bitter voice in the mirror cries,
"Hey, Prince, you need a shave."
Now if you can manage to get
your trembling fingers to behave,
why don't you try unwrapping
a stainless steel razor blade?
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down?

There's no hot water
and the cold is running thin.
Well, what do you expect from
the kind of places you've been living in?
Don't drink from that cup,
it's all caked and cracked along the rim.
That's not the electric light, my friend,
that is your vision growing dim.
Cover up your face with soap, there,
now you're Santa Claus.
And you've got a gift for anyone
who will give you his applause.
I thought you were a racing man,
ah, but you couldn't take the pace.
That's a funeral in the mirror
and it's stopping at your face.
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
ah wasn't it a strange way down?

Once there was a path
and a girl with chestnut hair,
and you passed the summers
picking all of the berries that grew there;
there were times she was a woman,
oh, there were times she was just a child,
and you held her in the shadows
where the raspberries grow wild.
And you climbed the twilight mountains
and you sang about the view,
and everywhere that you wandered
love seemed to go along with you.
That's a hard one to remember,
yes it makes you clench your fist.
And then the veins stand out like highways,
all along your wrist.
And yes it's come to this,
it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down?

You can still find a job,
go out and talk to a friend.
On the back of every magazine
there are those coupons you can send.
Why don't you join the Rosicrucians,
they can give you back your hope,
you can find your love with diagrams
on a plain brown envelope.
But you've used up all your coupons
except the one that seems
to be written on your wrist
along with several thousand dreams.
Now Santa Claus comes forward,
that's a razor in his mit;
and he puts on his dark glasses
and he shows you where to hit;
and then the cameras pan,
the stand in stunt man,
dress rehearsal rag,
it's just the dress rehearsal rag,
you know this dress rehearsal rag,
it's just a dress rehearsal rag.

-- "Dress Rehearsal Rag" by Leonard Cohen

Me as a Jandekized version of D. Boon from the back cover of the Minutemen's 3-Way Tie for Last???

. . . GOD HELP US ALL

Also Sprach 'the Mother of Us All' . . .

A real saint never does anything, a martyr does something but a really good saint does nothing, and so I wanted to have Four Saints who did nothing and I wrote the Four Saints in Three Acts and they did nothing and that was everything. Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing something. - Gertrude Stein

I am bored w/ dying of a broken heart. Everything I timidly starts fails w/ a boldness before unknown. What can I do but turn towards God and point my finger at him? I have come to the conclusion that the old man is even more stupid than he is weak. - Erik Satie

paging Sam Beckett

"Bring out your foghorns,
the mist has descended.
The alley's never been blinder.

What light there is, is too diffused
to indicate any direction.
What light there is,
tells us nothing."

-- life, the universe, and everything in a seven line Robert Wyatt song!

There are two things that don't have to mean anything; one is music, the other is laughter - Immanuel Kant (by-way-of John Cage)

In my world, Robert Wyatt's is the voice of humanity

The feeling of alienation [...] has however remained. I don't suppose it's anybody else's fault of course. There are so many nice people around and out there. I can see that. I just feel like a ghost amongst the living, that's all. - Robert Wyatt

God?

Mommy?

"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more" - Samuel Beckett

test pilot

POOP