comparing mythologies

"raging and weeping are left on the early road.
now each in his holy hill
the glittering and hurting days are almost done."         
                       leonard cohen





it is almost my birthday and i see no need to wait for celebrating.





cohen talks of french cathedrals and absalom and also calvary and freya and rossetti, but i think he mostly is talking about girls. is there anything more compelling to any of us in all of living than the Other? i mean, seriously? of course not! how many hours of your day go into it? ;)

Art can't just happen. It must make things happen.

that's a quote by a dude who used to come to my school when i was in junior high and he would play his violin like a crazy, wild, inspired thing, dancing almost while he played.

ive blogged about him before: his name is miha pogacnik.



ps king midas is a cat. he needs a flea bath but i like him.

well, it's only a tolstoy novel, haning under a spark-notes tree

we were wiki-ing billie holiday last night. juliet frowned on it altogether.




http://youtube.com/watch?v=gLHCR0OTqhs


when we did strange fruit as a cover for the record last summer, i had never seen her do this, or heard her sing it. i had heard the song title in connection with her name, but not what the song was about. she died at 44, the same age as my grandmother kate.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=3qyxmn0uQxE

end of an era

it's over. i wont give it away, but i hear tell--its surprising and unpredicted and very good. the outcome. so. there you have it: the seventh and final installment of harry potter.

it was quiet today. it was not me reading. but reading happened, interspersed with an all-out, balls-to-the-wall bike ride several miles up a little highway in the hills, we took hills, and navigated no-shoulder episodes with speedy drivers, we panted and sweated and then drank water, and came home. i tell you, good fun had by all, even tho i dont take to harry. i didnt make it past the first couple chapters in the first book, but i have been amazed by the recommendations, from folks who have my highest respects- there you have it again.

juliet has finished her read.

now we can all get on with the next things: like, say, dinner. and world summits and whatnot.

all's well with the world. again.

ps king midas has come home to roost. more in subsequent bloggie...

harry potter and the deathly hallows!

tonight, i listened as my voice and my daughter's voice went out to the berkshire hills (in my imagination) and visited all our friends there that we havent seen or even spoken to in several years. she and i are both singing on the track that a radio show out there selected for tonight's broadcast--and all i wonder is: god! how's nancy? we didnt really speak after i asked her WHAT THE HELL?!!? about all the flags that went waving on september 12th and 13th, 2001 after the towers fell: was it solidarity? or war?! she adopted our cat when we left that year, and i gave her a forest of plants that i couldnt (unfortunately) take with me.
'course, you can never take it with you. and: wow, i wonder if that little pub they opened on main st in chatheam did well, and do you remember the film festival that year? ang lee premiered flying dragons and danny aiello was in the audience that night, publicizing dinner rush, which was shot at his restaurant in tribeca. we were about to premiere caspar hauser in nyc and philly but well, anyway, that's what i was thinking when the song started, and my backup singer was sitting right next to me. the night was coming on quick.

hopefully, alice enjoyed her song.

my mother called me at the end of the broadcast, on the ferry to whidby island, on her way to my brother's gig at the doghouse saloon. she did a mess of dance work out there on whidby in the last couple years, and alice had an internship out there years ago. fullish circle.

as per today's title, someone was watching the mailbox like a freak this week, i didnt know why, but come this morning, progress! arrival! amazing! the final installment of the harry potter fantasmagoria, a phenomenon i have witnessed first hand, not as a reader but a bemused bystander--there are potter fans and then there are the rest of us. but i am not without regard for the whole thing: more power to those who get it! ;) and esp to my very happy daughter who has been waiting for her preorder copy for a hundred million long and saturated months! thank god for the mailman! now, we can all EXHALE (and be extremely quiet while she reads the thing from start to finish this weekend-48 hours of TOTAL silence. and i do mean SILENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)


;)

and who shall stand when he appeareth?

i listened to handel's messiah at top decibel this am--it IS july, after all. right on time. ('course, this was followed by louis armstrong singin i gotta a right to sing the blues...)

again the sky is gray today. i cant tell you my relief: coverup is needed at certain times and this is a good time for it. i have been relentlessly inward for several weeks now. also sick, which is rare for me, and so it all goes together from my tiny perspective.

it has been a time to overview--something i do in prospect of making plans and changeups, etc. i have to get a real feel for and stretch of a view for what's coming  up the road. once i heard a lecture way long ago in england. the speaker was talking about how we think of the past as behind us and we are walking away from it into the oncoming future, but he was proposing that in fact we back into the future not knowing at all what is coming behind us, and leave the past gazing back into it. im not sure if he was stating his fact, or recommending it. it was just a strong image.





i thnk i mean that i am extremely influenced by things around me, and really need the quiet of gray sky, handel, coffee, planning and sickness to get me in the pocket corner.

for james

my favorite mikado quote, in which ko ko and pish-tush and pooh-bah all gather 'round the campfire and put their heads together and sing this ole cowboy melody:

"To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!

A dull, dark dock, a life-long lock,
A short, sharp shock, a big black block!
To sit in solemn silence in a pestilential prison,
And awaiting the sensation
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!"



there it is!

a friend of mine is in prague filming the magician's nephew. she took us on a tour of a workshop where aslan was getting puppeted together back in van nuys. it was an fx lab/workshop, actually special effects makeup and that robotics thing they do in movies now. it was in a bunch of old warehouses in a stretch of san fernando valley so ogly you'd never know anything would be going on up there. the day we went it was hotter than hell which makes it even uglier, even if you have excellent ac in your car. there was a fighting aslan head, a dying aslan body and head, aslan just standing around, and so on. my friend was on minotaur detail and we'd been seeing her come home with glue and dyes under her nails for weeks before she went off to shoot the first movie. and now: the next installment! i was thinking of her today, wondering how prague is this time of year. the tour of her workshop was her way of cheering me up three summers ago when i felt like the sky had fallen into a puddle and was drowning.

it's time for next things, tho, and time for a cup of pg tips with some cake juliet and i baked last night. what else r ya gunna do?

texas tenure

hard to believe its been nearly ten months in the lone star place. i was trying to stay warm and receiving text pictures from a girlfriend back in LA who was hanging out at the whiskey-- this was last october and she was wondering when i would be back in town. it's been awhile.

we were hanging out during the festival in joshua tree, blasting any antidote to very mellow music- crazytown's butterfly, baby. but its a refuge for gram parson people so we tried to be respectful. the fires were burning back on the coast, and i had just picked up the master for the record, and she had crashed her car into a big truck somewhere outside palm desert and needed a rest up. that's how we ended up at the fest together--i drove out and picked her up and we went.

the funny thing about time passing is not the time but what gets done. i am very very very into getting things done. its my thing. everything else i put on a face for and try to tolerate, but dont. that's the truth. i cant.

i miss the music, the lively, the similarity of big town world but i sure dont miss, not ever, the dollar stores and the home depots and no, not even starbucks. i may have gone all unibomber and whatever living way out for awhile, and my ears are having a hard time remembering what real shit sounds like, but i havent had to look at strip malls. this summer is the first time ive seen movies in a long time and only on dvd and only cause they got brought in by a visitor.

i always get a little nervous when its about to change up, and also working on songs. im in a neverbeentherebefore zone. that's how it all sounds to me. completely new forms. and its so ugly duckling! i mean, im awkward in it, which is an unusual feeling. mostly its so organic there's no outer observation at all, like in rehearsal: no talking, just play. fuck it up, but play. and when i get really super freaked out, i go and listen to the most schizoid playlist yet just to match my head: damien rice, foreigner, eagle-eye cherry, holly golightly, bob seger, hugh masekela, jose feliciano doing 'light my fire', nellies mckay and furtado, neutral milk hotel, lyfe jennings, mc chris, but most absolutely satisfying-prince's little red corvette. it's all more or less in the same pop beat thing, and even nearly, the same key. diana king's say a little prayer for you throws it a little rasta but whatever. im about to stop listening to music altogether.

i think i just need to dance. summer's on.

also, here's something so wildwomendoandtheydontregretit!
http://2007.sxsw.com/video/movie_window.2007.php?dir=2007_trailers&id=1142

on the other hand

there are things: shep speaks, for instance.

well?

oh! hey!

yes, well?

well what?

what is all that complaining about?

oh that. ive been a little--

yeah, jenn, how bout no euphemisms for a change.
or metaphors. or ethereal imaginings. or whatnots.

i guess heaven is teaching you the subtleties of human language.

whatever, jenn. you know youre writing this.

there's no need to get ugly.

so? what are you so sad about? or should i ask, are you ever going to say what youre so sad about?

pressing a point?

side-stepping?

i never said i was sad!

oh yes you did.

not in so many words, i mean.

well, you are now.

shep. time and place, man.

here we are.

fine, so YOU decide.

i have.

(silence) and where am i supposed to begin?

at the beginning, jenn. or the end. wherever.

shep, this is not the format, this is not the platform--

euphemism-metaphoric gibblety-gook, jenn.

right. well. how bout fuck off then?

ok. so what are you so sad about?

(silence)

??

(silence)

fine. that's better. at least no more pitiful impotent shouts of bad mood and 'tude-iness. deflection, jenn, just a lot of deflection.

look who died and made himself king.

what was that you said about ugly? (silence) should i sit down here next to you for a bit before i go?

yeah.

k. (silence) it's hot tonight.

yes.

really hot.

yeah.

sure dont miss that.

yeah.

pecan grove town

last night we watched a movie we'd seen only a few hundred times, and i could nearly recite the thing.









the only thing about talking to the human condition is that it often talks back like this:

"hi! plese cum see my websyte about viagra! youl LUUUVVV it!!!!!!"

or some other whatnot. which serves a person rhyte for triing to talk to the humane condishin.









(ps sorry to be in such a bad mood but its july and hot and i dont dare talk about music. not in texas: i feel a severe case of smartmouth coming on.)

psych!

its so weird: goes around, comes around. very desmond and molly jones.

monday was my ex's birthday. he sounded good on the phone which is good. its been three years, you'd think that would be enough to come around. right?

i have times when i get mad about everything, and feel unfairness intensely. ive been having that lately, i think mostly because ive been really super tired, and then everything just looks like shit. but also, apart from tiredness, i have a serious allergy to unfairness; i always have. its why i could never be in cliques: the whole purpose was to exclude. i could never handle racism or other group-weirdness like that. and individual persecutions, the little private pretty stuff you see between people, man o man, i no can handle any of it. and generally i move along without spending too much time on what is obviously unfair in my direction, first of all, cause whatcha gonna do? there's assholes in every language and culture there ever was, its not even really very interesting, but i cant help being pissed off about what is possible without it.

so never fucking mind. im in a bad mood and thats that. meanwhile ive been playing some outrageously loud liz phair on borrowed ipod-'phones, while biking to get my lungs back. monstrously loud, predictable pop, which helps.