Ballad of the Dark Miser

the creature walks among us . . .

It seems like many years ago now, that harrowing period, where I was first experimenting with the forbidden yogas, a recondite left-hand path only hinted at by Patanjali, and to be honest, much of the hard work was done by a young drug addict I was involved with . . . I would skim off the top what she learned during meth-fueled marathons. And for whatever reason, it seems true that to get really good at something, practice 16 hours a day. Wayne Gretzkey. Buckethead. All graduates of the 16 hour sessions. I can't go 16 hours without a shower . . .[yes, you see it coming already - tha George Hamilton of Darkness . . . ]

Now I can see, how everything really IS connected, and the true meaning of the word 'consequence' -to follow continuously, as in the gurus of Bhakti yoga define devotion as 'continuous knowledge' - it's silly to think I would ride away unscathed - our actions are with us always, perhaps too compressed to view all at once, but once you get the knack of feeling for them, you see that the future ones as well are already with you in much the same way. To be able to measure these things at all, and to see what a small portion, like the mind, or desire, they are of you, is perhaps a step into a larger existence.

Among the many side effects of that era is the accidental soaking up of the . . . psychic fingerprints of whoever I'm closest to . . .to interpret myself as though I were another. This is not an altogether voluntary process, and certainly has nothing in the nature of 'Soul -stealing ' as I have been accused of, on occasion. It was niave, I now know, to assume that simply by refusing to use these talents selfishly I would emerge unscathed.

Sleeping off a long phone session with my Los Vegas Angel, I awoke with my various issues and feelings filtered as if they were hers! I rose up, staggering, sleepy, thirsty, and VEXED, one overidding thought - 'I'm so CUTE! ! !
It's just not fair . . .' And looking in the mirror, it was true. My recently dyed hair [elvis black] sticking out in fascicular goemetries never before dreamed by man. I resembled a character from one of those terrifying Xmass specials, with the puppets. . . the Heat Miser ? ? ? Closer to the Cold Miser, but EVIL . . .The Dark Miser! And there it was - the monster looking back. . . I am my own evil twin, and aren't we all?

[just tell me what I want to hear about this!]

prolouge to 'The Life' :number one for da bulletets . . .
A retired Gangster, upon listening to my Romantic struggles, laughed at me and exclaimed 'You're still living the Life!' This worries me, because the realities of our respective fast lanes are so different - akin to the differences between the films of Martin Scorsese and those of Tim Burton. I've never known him to be wrong before, hence It Troubles Me. Perhaps there is something fundamental, a refusal of one life and acceptance, or worse, presumption of other elements that makes it all the same on some level. . .

The indian summer is failing, and even the sun has a pallor. It's no longer casts golden rays, but a more stark, harsh light - as if it's been replaced with a cheaper and more efficient flourescent star.

Detroit is once again the most Dangerous City in America with a population over 500,000. [Camden, New Jersey, thanks to all that good Afgan heroin, is most dangerous overall] This is a fun statistic, but not as fun as comparing the statistics for american armed forces in Iraq to Detroits. There are MANY years where more Americans have been killed just living in Detroit than fighting the war in Iraq.

An auspicious begining to soup and poetry season.

The Life Part one: flying the Brass Dirigible.
Or is that the Einsteinium airship? [it's probably worth noting that I was a Tin Machine fan BEFORE I discovered Jimmy Page. . . ]
There is a Led Zeppelin Rennaissance sweeping the nation, and I'm afraid it starts here, with me. So as ineffable tribute bands stalk the land, and your local orchestra gears up for a laser light show featuring 'the Sympohonic Plant and Page'. . . yes I must take the blame. I was merely looking fof a common language I could share with Sarah, and that was what worked.
Now he whole business has sort of taken on a life of it's own . . .A hard Rock Golem, running amok. . . even the Brain has thrown his critical faculties behind it. The what and how are not as interesting in this case as the why. Stephen Davis pointed out that back in the day, the fans of this music were overwhelmingly 'Cannon fodder youth ' and I think that term should be bandied about more often. We are in some ways mirroring the 70's, with an ugly war, and 'revised economic expectations'.
More entertaining, and infinitely more shallow, is the Amusing Backlash that Sarah and I are ( snicker ) 'enduring' . There is alot of 'oh, they're so cool now' through the hipster world. The puch line is that we don't have a single track layed yet! Just the threat of it has been enough!
If I really thought ART and show business were seperate entities,
I'd think show Biz was WAYYYYY better!

I try to avoid the media as much as possible just before an election, but while loading up on taquitos and a Slurpee at 7-11, a headline caught my eye:

'Pope Declares: Keith Richards is God'

Apparently this was some overdue recognition for The Human Riff's contributions to the Tom Waits masterpiece Rain Dogs, playing and/or singing on Big Black Maraiah, Union Square and Blind Love. . . If anyone is interested in a thought provoking interview with Tom's Other guitarist, check this out: http://www.tomajazz.com/perfiles/ribot_marc_eng.htm

It's raining Lesbians

I don't have the right un-brella for that

I don't want to get soaked

Mambo Sun, dry these Jasper clouds

The Life Pt II - the Ice Cream Mafia : time over under and sideways

In the true Max Fisher spirit, The Kimono Club and the surviving Eastside Saucy Fellows have merged into an uneasy eastside-westside alliance, known as the Ice Cream Mafia. Jet Li recently gave an interview, and I love it when he does - the amount of english he can be bothered with could be described as 'linguistic impressionism'. Eschewing a martial arts question, he launched into a beatiful non-sequitir about how when he was young, he loved ice cream. And he would do all these crazy things to get ice cream. THEN he wanted a bicycle. Later he wanted a car. But the 'Wanting' part was always the same. One whole element unto itself. Only the things changed. Combined with William Gibson's assertion that All object of desire are found objects, traditionally at least, we not only have an interesting approach to why things are as they are, but also the charter of this new gang.

I'm at he door of the Ice cream parlor; The one next to the funeral parlor on 8Mile. It opens abruptly, and a very tall man sways through, ducking to clear the exit. I recognize him - Cnoe, a local rapper. He's good - his work goes beyond the plutolatry and cliche violence that makes the genre so boring. We exchange The nod.

I'd last seen him at the VMA's - I arrived in a Bugatti Veyron, with Vida Guerra. [the same car Sarah would drive in our race across the country, one of our first and best publicity stunts.] We'd been joking the whole time that her ass was bigger than mine. I heard a whistle, and it was Cnoe, leaning over the roof of a pepto-bismol coloured Buick Skylark, impossibly jacked up the height of a monster truck. 'Yo man, ain't the Cheetah no mo'! '

Ridiculously, I understood him - as in ' the fastest land animal is no longer the Cheetah, but the driver of the Veyron' , as in, 'I like your car.' He was escorting pornstars Taylor Rain and Tiny Vi. As they descended the Skylark's ladders, we looked at each other and laughed. We'd both chosen different flavors of crassness for our entrance, the way other celebrities choose a fashion designer. Our exchange was not merely an admission, but an ENJOYMENT of that crassness. That's Eastside. We were playing along, but not pretending it was real. THAT would be Westside. . .

On the sidewalk, He lights up a Newport, and provects a handshake.
''Yo man' he says, before exhaling 'Motherfuckers won' LET you smoke inside.''
'That's crucial'
"you and Vida - what was up with that -that ass looked good enough to eat!"
' Aw, she wanted to sodomize me with a strapon.'
" Really?" He starts, his voice higher, accent morphing ''Cos there was this nasty chick . . . '' He stops, realizing he's volunteered something, as my permagrin spreads.
'Naw man, she wanted to go BOWLING -how fucked up is THAT ? . . . '
Both laughing
"Shiiiit . . . "
'YOu comin back in?'
"Naw man, I just had spuMOni - that shit is tight!"
'Right on -I'm gonna get me some!'


Knocking on Zappa's Door . . .
In the midst of a grimy week, a happy revelation arrived from one of my idols, both in music, and in life - the very great Weird Al Yankovic. It's amazing that he can put out something that not only crushes every contemporary offering, but also bests his previous efforts. To hear his satirical 'Straight outta Lynwood' is to realize how stupid the actual pop music of the last five years has been. It's a bizarre concept to argue for taking a humorist seriously . . .but Weird Al has brought the game up considerably. He is beginning to resemble that OTHER american humorist, of the baby snakes, hot rats, and catholic girls . . .
On another front, the constant battle over P2P has been adressed in a novel way - there is so much extra loot involved in the retail edition, that it's well worth buying the disc. It's interesting that Weird Al should be the one to find the High Road here, while many more avant artists are still snivelling . . .Don't they know it's not punk rock to call the websherrif?

The Life Pt 3: the Art of Biting

I was walking around in the fog this week, and watching the swirls of it, the notion occured to me that I seem to always be dealing with the holes left by other men. Men who wern'e there or didn't fill the space alloted them. This defines large swathes of my social interactions, from stalkers, to lesbians, all the way around to lesbian stalkers. . . Keep this in mind for later.

'What lives in you lies at the center of a network of veins and arteries. This is the net of blood. Light, or electrical energy, runs through the nerves in your body. This is the net of gold. You exist always caught in this net, under this net of blood and gold. You are caught on something; You are resting on something . . . Perhaps what I mean is, did you ever touch my arm, unconciously, and feel comforted by it, or look into my eyes and see an unexpected expression , which was so fleeting that you did not bother to to try to figure out what it was, but which pleased you somehow, for an instant, before it was gone?

You can't know, of course, because you have forgotten. But it is just those things that I long for, those little lost details that make up the entire difference between thought and experience. I mean, did you ever love me as a living creature? I mean was there anything, ever, about standing next to me that you could not put into words, or keep in your heart? Those are the things that remain unsaid, the little sparks. They cannot exist on their own; they must cling to something else, for they are nothing in themselves; They only make up the spaces in between those things that can be perceived.

You, inside your nets of blood and nerves, are always surrounded by these empty spaces. They are sparks of light. The earth is full of them, and so is heaven, full of little sparks. '

A letter from Ludwig Von Sacher,

-Lives of the Monster Dogs, Kirsten Bakis

I think this says about everything that need be said about Construction /Deconstruction and their isms. I was seeking a link between the work of Foucalt and Baudrillard, and yes, I think Derrida fills this nicely.

Using the example of the male negative spaces, I could see the traditional structure of men and their roles, filtered through history in different ways ala Foucalt and these are subject to Derrida's violent heirarchies, surely. Most alarmingly, I realized that these holes can be left by men who never existed at all!! Dreams of lovers of husbands, or tv fathers. . . Another layer of reality to be taken into account! [Baudrillard]

The intellectual process of all this has not kept my arms free of lesbians, so I think Ludwig Von Sacher is on the right track.

IV :Word to Ramona A Stone

' a person who loses a name will feel anxiety descending ' - Bowie, outside

Taking this philosophic ride, I was dismayed to see that it had already been done - this literary throwdown was 40 years behind the world of painting. By the Green and Red mountain period, it was already complete. There are some interesting questions arising herein. For example, this was a time when the idea of Narrative content was moved from the canvass to the manifesto of the artist. So in a sense, there was a literary/ philosophic platform for this to occur on. . .

MORE interestingly, is to see that for most of the last 100 years, painting was in the forefront of the arts, driving it's theories and when did that stop, exactly? ? ? As near as I can tell, it ends with Warhol, but I would be interested in hearing from you all on the matter.

I was recently discussing the Art world with some painters and sculptors, and an argument ensued as to whether Jackson Pollack's reputation was made by Clement Greenberg or Peggy Guggenheim. I thought it MOST interesting that Pollack himself was never mentioned as a possible source . . .

And this should reinforce the lesson I've been driving at the whole time on this blog, with my advice to brush up on your collective partygoing skills . . .

So, if no one ever told you:

It is a popularity contest,

it has always been a popularity contest,

the patronage system is very much in effect, and if anything moreso now than we like to think.

I have been a little dismayed to hear THREE otherwise clever friends this very week mention 'It's a popularity contest' with overtones of discovery, disappointment, or even outright betrayal. So, here it is.

You are now responsible.

You were all warned.

The popularity contest does not trivialize anything. Are you not good at the popularity contests? With the professors, the officers, waitresses? It's an inextricable part of living with and as primates. The idea that this is somehow impure is silly in our consumer culture. Are we arguing for a purity of consumption?

I'm certainly not on this blog for my writing skills - not only do I lack them, I lack even the intrest in them - I am here because of the popularity I enjoy. And I write here because you are popular with me.

It's true that there is a potential for a non commercial art on this internet [if we shift the consumption over to the requisite hardware we are using right now] - for a full exploration, check out William Gibson's Pattern Recognition - but that doesn't seem to be the way we like to organize. Why d'you suppose that is?

' Because every artist knew, in his heart of hearts, no matter how many times he tried to close his eyes and pretend otherwise ( History! History! -where is thy salve! ) that success was real only when sucess was sucess within le monde. He could close his eyes and try to believe that all that mattered was that he knew his work was great. . . and that other artists respected it . . .and that history would surely record his achievements . . .but deep down, he knew he was lying to himself. I want to be a Name, goddamn it! -at least that, a name on the lips ofthe museum curators, gallery owners, collectors, patrons, board members, commitee members, culture hostesses, and their attendant intellectuals and journalists and their Time and Newsweek -even that! Oh yes! . . . Even the goddamn journalists!

-Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word

I think it's silly to attempt to marginalize one's art and call that virtuous. It isn't an either or proposition - your task is to create as you will and popularize that. Or someone smarter will. It goes without saying that the dumber are already at it!

Be fruitful and popular!

love,

- El Pirata