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A lazy breeze, overwhelming gale force winds, blustering blizzards.
Air.
Gasp it in. Longingly sigh it out.
Inhaling the idea of what could be or what once was, exhaling a scream for what is.
The best thing about having hair (H + AIR = hair) is feeling it flirtatiously fondled by the zephyrs.
Skin just lives to be tickled by the invisible breath made from stirs in the atmosphere.
Does the same breeze come around to you twice in one lifetime? Are there new ones, or are they the same gusts that danced across time, maybe bumping into the likes of Marilyn Monroe or John Lennon along the way?
Imagine drawing in the same breath that exited from Adolf Hitler, would you choke on it?
If you exert a yell with everything you are, will that air penetrate time and send warmth to the ones you lost? Or, perhaps, a chill to the ones that lost you?
You can hold your breath, but does it hold you?
Air can't be ensnared no matter how hard you try to catch it; it's ALL free – for now.
Currently listening :
The Sun Is Often Out
By Longpigs
Release date: 1997-02-25
I only had two drinks last night, and about half way through the second one, a wave of YUCK overcame me.
My slight frame only amounts to 92 pounds these days and I'm a hypoglycemic that has to eat constantly, which is dreadfully boring. I ate before I left, but not enough, I guess.
After releasing a portion of what I drank into the unfortunate pipes that delve below the Castle, I just stayed in the stall, leaning against the door feeling that foggy urge to pass out. My head pulled down as my eyes fluttered in defiance, but the thought of sleeping right there, where I stood, felt like velvet somehow.
Until I thought of how many other faces that may have squished upon this very door; possibly less hygienic faces, or even other malodorous body parts and…fluids.
I immediately jerked back to the far wall where I imagined a CSI person snapping on the old latex gloves and black lighting said wall, nodding as they said "Oh yeah this place is just coated in jizz. This particular sample is from a 27 year old Goth named Shane, but he goes by "Dark Dildon't" in his social circles. We can tell a lot more from the samples with today's technology. We're working on DNA GPS systems, and when that's up and running I'll be able to track someone from their spooge stains".
I thought of the fetish nights at the Castle, and how many riding crops get accidentally dropped into the toilet, and how painful that would be to be fishing it out whilst donned in a whalebone leather corset (they aren't known for their flexibility).
I don't know a lot about fetishism, I have many acquaintances that are into all that, but I've never peered behind that curtain. I really love that song by IAMX though, "Spit It Out". It's one of the few songs that I know of that isn't industrial, but does sort of touch on violent proclivities in the sexual wonderland.
I would be a disaster in that world, I mean, I think I'd look ok in the garb (Do they make leather hoods in extra extra small?), but I'm a wimpy goofball with a low threshold for pain and claustrophobic to boot. I could inflict it, I guess, given the right circumstances (ball kicking available upon request?).
I previously wrote something to this effect in a sarcastic series I posted elsewhere for one of my voyeur stalkers that I guess hates me (whatever, and yes I have no life) , but I tried to turn it around and make it humorous as if he didn't and that I'd do anything for him, including the following :
"If YOU wanted me to beat you raw, I would. If you want me to roll an egg down a dark hallway with my bare feet whilst singing the national anthem, I will. If you want me leather clad and chopping onions on your back with a strobe light on, it's done. If you want me to scream Russian obscenities at you while tenderizing your giblets with a flatiron, I'm so there. If you want me to dig the fingernails of my right hand (left hand has stumps – it's a guitar thing) into the base of your scintillating scepter, then I'm your girl. I can't promise that I wouldn't laugh the entire time, but I would do your bidding whenever, wherever."
I'm serious about the latter bit, the laughing. I wouldn't be able to straighten my face in any capacity, so unless there's cackling dominatrix's abound, I best stay on the side of the fence that doesn't require any "safe" words (the Kama Sutra can be just as interesting as a ball and gag, if things get tedious in that department).
The bathroom stall – the stories it might tell (or scream). Actually, they seem pretty clean, compared to most places (CBGB's facilities were unsuitable even by third world standards), but I have a wild imagination. It's a wonder I can even check out books from the libraries, as what possibly touches them before you mentally ingest their words, might drive you to drink.
Currently listening :
The Alternative
By IAMX
Release date: 2008-05-06
"It's 4:00 a.m. I've got the Dr. Hfuhruhurr Ale
I've got nothing to lose so I'm pissin' on the third rail
Groggy eyed and fried I'm headed for the station
D-Train ride Coney Island vacation" Stop That Train - The Beastie Boys
It's strange what memories remain at whim to our instant recall. I often wonder what sparks the mental rolodex and why it can hang on so clearly to a snowy walk home, but yet block out a life changing conversation someone swears you had with them.
The weird shit that I've seen in the New York subway constantly frolics through my grey matter, no matter how long I've been away. It pirouettes through my thoughts at the oddest of moments. Two instances in particular.
The Broadway/Lafayette station in Manhattan has three levels, and a million stairs. Once you depart the train and go up one set of stairs, there is a platform where you can cross over to another track or more stairs to continue up to even more stairs (it takes approximately 5 hours to exit to street level if you're even remotely out of shape).
My ears were encapsulated in Radiohead's "OK Computer", when I bounced up to the semi-deserted platform after my jaunt on the D train. I can't recall why I was there that day, but I definitely remember my peepers zoning in on this man who could easily pass for Pavorotti.
Seeing Pavorotti in the subway, alone would make an interesting tale, but I hardly think it was him. This man was dressed exactly in his likeness though, and even had the Italian trench coat draped expensively over his shoulders, accented with a silky white scarf that probably cost more than everything I had on my person (including electronic apparatuses).
What stopped me in my tracks was what he was doing. He was "skooching", for lack of a better term, sideways across the platform, the way someone would sidle along a ledge of a high rise building before making veiled threats to leap to their demise. He was also sweating like a Republican congressman caught bare-backing a pierced up 14 year old boy behind a McDonalds.
Ironically, "No Surprises" had just entered my ears as I slowly moved past this gigantic panic attack that I so couldn't look away from. He was attached to some earphones as well, and when he reached the center of the platform, he just started bawling as if someone had whispered through them that Toby Keith was penning an all country music opera in German, and that Lincoln Center locked down a 2 year commitment to running it (assuming he liked opera - the mix of that and country definitely brings the idea of cochlear torture to a new disturbing level, not to mention the German aspect).
For some reason I can't forget this, but the last name of the 3rd guy I ever slept with is lost to the ether. (Does that make me a HO? F'excellent.)
The other event that lurks in my back catalog is when I was waiting for the 1 or the 6 at 72nd in the Upper West Side. I was going to rehearsal and had my guitar slung over my shoulder as I paced for what seemed like eternity (that's about 15 NY minutes) waiting for the train.
I'm not usually into hippy looking guys, but there was this one in a tie dyed shirt scoping me out, and he was kind of delish. He had shaggy blonde hair; kind of suntanned as it was summer, and a scarf tied around his head. He looked a bit like a Deadhead pirate from California, but with a great face (and a nice ass, I must say).
He circled around me twice and then went behind whatever those giant pillars are that keep the tunnel above your head (as opposed to crushing it to bits).
I looked away and then back as I saw him peer out from behind the pillar. He smiled, opening wide to bare some fangs at me! Seriously, he had fucking vampire teeth! Not fake waxy shit either; he had the real surgically implanted (or veneers?) bite-bites!
Now a pale Goth doing this at two in the morning in the East Village would not have shocked me (it's almost a pre-requisite on St. Marks), but a tan hippy vampire dude at 72nd hissing about around 5pm? That completely flabbergasted me.
Some other guy interrupted my wide-eyedness to ask me what kind of guitar I had, so I quickly answered and then glanced back but un-deadhead was gone, and I never saw him again (thankfully).
If this kind of yip yap flutters through my brain's waking moments, you can only imagine what I dream about.
I just hope that whatever flashes before my eyes in the seconds before I draw my last breath has absolutely nothing to do with the New York Transit system.
Watch, I'll be killed on the subway now, simply because I wrote it. THAT would be hilarious.
Currently listening :
Paul's Boutique
By Beastie Boys
Release date: 1989-07-19
"Empty prayer, empty mouths, combien reaction
Empty prayer, empty mouths, talk about the passion
Not everyone can carry the weight of the world
Not everyone can carry the weight of the world" Talk About the Passion – REM
From Wikipedia:
Passion (from the Latin patior, meaning to suffer or to endure) is an emotion of feeling very strongly. Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for anything and often requiring action. Passion often applies to lively or eager interest in or admiration for a proposal, cause, or activity or love.
Passion can be expressed as a feeling of unusual excitement, enthusiasm or compelling emotion towards a subject, idea, person, or object.
I've got passion on my mind lately; in the broader sense, and yes, in the sexual sense too.
You may take passion for granted, as I have done, when it's been just another part of who you are, but when it's missing, YIKES.
My passion for music surpasses any other that I could muster. From gated snares to the mere act of shaking my itty bitty badonkadonk (in some Asian countries I would be considered bootylicious, so we'll run with that) to the pulsating vibrations that start their seduction with a full audio massage.
Music is never boring; it's forever changing except in one pivotal area. It consistently provokes the full range of emotions like nothing else. For that reason alone, I remain faithful and duty bound in a way that I've not been able to do with anything or anyone.
I think what makes some music go beyond superior is the passion that is behind it. What you put out there is what you get back. If uncertainty is lingering in your work, you get uncertainty back. If balls to the walls are what you put in, well, you get pixel right?
At the Radiohead shows I've been party to witness, the exchange of passion between the audience and the band was the most exquisite "back and forth" imaginable. The more we were into it, the more they were too, which made us even MORE into it. Frankly, I'm shocked that we all didn't just burst into goo by the time they played "The Bends".
You can't fake passion. You can fake an orgasm (well some of us can), and you can feign interest in someone, but you cannot fake passion.You can't teach it either; it's either there or it's not.
Now sexually, you have to teach mechanics to some people, sometimes. In my early 20's I didn't have the patience for that. I thought if a guy didn't know what he was doing, then we just didn't have any chemistry, but in my later years, I've found that if you teach someone the ropes, they will tie them just how you like =)
Unfortunately, some people are mechanically set; they know where everything goes and don't do anything really wrong, but are indeed mechanical. You can teach them the entire Karma Sutra, but if they lack the enthusiasm, you'd be better off just playing Twister (there's less clean up afterwards).
Passion is all reciprocity. I can't get into it if someone is about as passionate for me as they would be a math exam. Now I'm not speaking of LOVE (whatever that is), as I can have passion with people that are everything I don't want in a friend, but do want to be friendly with. (Pheromones? It's not a crime.)
If I had to choose between the guy I was friends with that laid there like a sloth on ludes, or someone I barely know that would fiercely (not violently, but definitely SAFELY) shag me stupid, girlfriend is all about the stupid then. Given the choice, I would rather have one weekend with someone that reset my clock and crossed my eyes, than some stale ass relationship where the guy lacked more WOW than the "accepted terms of agreement" you never read when installing a new computer program.
WOW is a look in their eyes, like they'd absolutely lose their shit if their skin doesn't get to frolic all over yours. You can't summon it (especially if they're using you for something besides sex –money, connections, whatever), it's reactive. Some simply are devoid of WOW. I didn't even know people could be like that till, well… that's neither here nor there.
I realize that the novelty wears a bit thin and life happens, but I think we can possibly take our cue from music and learn to keep things at a level where you aren't just phoning it in after a while.
If we can keep songs forever entertaining and growing, maybe we can do that in every aspect of our lives.
Art is reflective of people that are reflective of art. Back and forth. Talk about the passion.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Yesterday, I had the grim task of making rounds with a funeral announcement for a lifelong friend who lost his battle with cancer this weekend. I don't remember not knowing Dennis, whose passion was his family and mountain bike racing. My association with him and his family made me a better person in ways they will never know.
Life is short.
If yours is lacking passion, it's time to get lit, man. Don't stay with people you can't get it up for. Don't lock yourself down out of obligation. Don't let rigidity or boredom consume you.
Bite life in the ass! If nothing else, you'll leave behind some interesting teeth marks.
Currently listening :
Murmur
By R.E.M.
Release date: 1992-08-06
I started to write this blog on Bastille Day, but I got hungry and forgot about it. Most Americans could give a shit about Bastille Day (July 14), and I only think of it as a day to engorge oneself in French cuisine.
In NYC there is usually a small outdoor thing going on for Bastille Day. All the Francophiles head down to flex their linguistic muscles, and dolts like me make an appearance just long enough to buy my crepes and run.
Banana crepes with chocolate sauce could only be more awesome if spread across an emaciated, young, rocker boy's hairless chest, but even without the human platter, they rock the 'buds like nothing else.
I have a French surname, as well as French ancestors (duh). I speak, read, and write a decent amount of French, and my favorite food is also FRENCH. I've not been to France, but I've visited French speaking Canada (where my favorite "Scot" in the world lives. I know 6 different Scot/Scotts), and I cringe like a Republican at the threat of Universal Healthcare when I hear the language mispronounced. So yeah, that and the permanently snippy look on my face often gives away this segment of my heritage (we look pissy, but are very warm and friendly, apparently too much so).
I adore French directors (did my thesis on Truffaut for film class), and their products. "Amelie", "The Bride Wore Black", "Un Coeur en Hiver", "Belle De Jour", and "Delicatessen" (brilliantly insane) to name a few.
I thought of these things when I first abandoned this blog, but then weird French stuff kept appearing on my scope, if you will.
One thing was a dream that I was in Provence, where I've never been, and I've never even spoke of. In the dream, I was sporting a gigantic soft taco (not like that) that I had folded in half twice, under my left arm like a portfolio. (I really don't care to know if that means anything - REALLY!)
The following day when I checked my email, there was a Myspace friend request from a band called "Five June" from France. Guess what area? Provence! Freaked my ass out. I kind of dig 'em too; they have that Patti Smith-gets-even-dirtier vibe about them, so I accepted.
France isn't really known for its hot music scene. I mean, in the dance world HELLz yeah - "Daft Punk", "Yelle", "Les Rita Mitsouko", but to my recollection, there's never been a French "Beatles" type of group.
Lots of non-English speaking bands have the quirky thing ("Cibo Matto"), or the dance thing (again "Cibo Matto") but do these countries ever produce bands like "Coldplay," "U2", or "Radiohead"? Meaningful pop music, for lack of better terms.
Does Germany have bands like "Snow Patrol?" Does Italy have its own version of "Death Cab for Cutie"? Or do these countries only generate bands that dress in angry pig costumes, and robot dance to endless computer loops?
Are power chords and piccolo snares not as satisfying as accordions and tubas? Are there any Emo bands in India or China? Are these countries just satisfied with "spectator" status? What is it about the English world that facilitates the above mentioned bands, but is not inherent in the Ukraine?
"Five June" has a garage band sound, so at least that's a step in a different direction from what I have assumed of France. But you know what happens when you assume (oh did I really just type something that lame? Yep).
One band that I really like that sings in English is "Prime STH", who hail from Sweden, which also gave us "PB&J" ("Peter, Bjorn, & John"). Indie rock, but not BIG time pop bands.
If anyone knows of any more, by all means, send them along.
I'm all ears (if only, but then I couldn't type).
Currently listening :
Underneath the Surface
By Prime STH
Release date: 2001-07-10
"It's king and queen and we must go down round behind the chandelier where I won't have to speak my mind and you won't have to hear. Shreds of news and afterthoughts and complicated scenes. We'll weather down behind the light and fade like magazines" Romeo's Tune - Steven Forbert
If you haven't seen "The Squid and the Whale" by now, by all means get your eyes on it, and then check out Noah Baumbach's next work "Margot at the Wedding".
I saw "The Squid and the Whale" just over a year ago, and it certainly raised a brow right off of my face (it collided with the ceiling fan - painful and ugly). Baumbach, the filmmaker, has an intellectual honesty about sexuality and dysfunctional families that you either salivate for, or detest. He has an exquisite indie style that I don't always get ("The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" was complete shit, but he's only guilty of writing it, not directing), but he's nothing, if not impressionable.
Last night (well, 4 AM this morning), I viewed "Margot at the Wedding", his film from last year. It's not as good as "Squid", but there was some formidable dialogue, as well as some good tune-age. The characters weren't as developed as they could've been and a majority of the editing was a bit erratic, but I get the feeling this is a jumping off point to bigger and better.
It was a little hard to buy Jack Black as the serious guy, Malcolm, but I love the line that Kidman's character, Margot, uses in regards to him: "He's not ugly, but he is completely unattractive." (Yeah he's naked in this and my corneas aren't taking my calls anymore, despite promises of shirtless Jared Leto photos.)
I think judging by the cast, some would be sniffing too hard in what they think is the "chick flick" direction, but their sexist asses might be a tad surprised.
Baumbach is a native Brooklynite, and like his predecessor Woody Allen, he places women in very meaty roles instead of roles where they are merely "meat". Why do you think Allen got so much play in the '70's and '80's? He changed film for women. "Interiors", "Another Woman", and "Annie Hall" made that f'ugly little genius the most sought after lay on both coasts back in the day. (If you further our cause, we further yours - strange how that works ay? Don't treat us like were just a piece [even if we act like it] and you'll be showered in piece a' bounty.) I'm a die hard Allen fan (books and film) but this blog's going to stay in the confines of Baumbach's stuff.
"I don't listen to music anymore."
WHAT???????? The character Margot, who seems to be a combination of the two parents from "Squid", nonchalantly spews this as if she's talking about giving up skiing or something. In my book, the only way you don't listen to music anymore is if you're 100% deaf, or dead. And even then, I think I could conjure a way. WTF?
I've heard of people like this. They conform to the dictates of societal ageism and resign themselves to being couch plants that live through their children. That's a choice, and certainly not one I'm up for selecting. Life without music isn't a life. I don't know if I'll make it to like 60 or 70, but I still plan on shakin' my thing till it falls off, basically. I don't give a fuck how it looks. I'm here for my ears, not for those judgmental eyes placed so rigidly above pursed lips, and giant noses that can't mind their own.
I will NEVER bail on music.
Eh…Margot clearly had a stick up her ass, but this film does slip in some Blondie (2 songs!) and an obscure old fave of mine "Romeo's Tune" by Steven Forbert. The fact that that song is highlighted has endeared Baumbach to me forever.
"Margot at the Wedding" wasn't great, but again, if you dug "Squid", it's a must see. I don't think it's as fluid as say, "Mr. Jealousy" and "Kicking and Screaming" (also by Baumbach), but like "Squid", it's unpredictability is addictive.
Currently listening :
Eat to the Beat
By Blondie
Release date: 2001-09-11
