skywriting for beginners

flashback, warm nights

2011-05-26T12:16:00.001-05:00

shape of things to come

2011-05-23T01:29:00.001-05:00

now that the rapture has passed, i'm thinking: maybe, root-beer float?

more to the point,

2011-05-22T14:00:00.004-05:00

"what you seek is seeking you."

(utterly stolen photos, i claim no ownership. republishable per their copyright, however.)

kind of a gorgeous quote by rumi. nice guy, rumi. kind of like: your beloved, or your life, or your gods are tripping over their robes in thick undergrowth just to get to you.

i get to hear a lot of him (rumi) via a teacher of mine these days, it's nice to hear the real clergy speak actually, the poets, the poem-lovers.

i so dig my town

2011-05-20T07:48:00.003-05:00

we r so creepy and i lov that.

(images ganked from....um, cinespia.org?) this refers to the amazing summer movie series at the hollywood forever cemetery in case youre not familiar. truly the ultimate neighborhood tailgate/block party. bring your own apples and cheese.

also, a while back in april at the nat hist:

yeah yeah, it used to be "her town too"

;)

winds of morning, 10 east

2010-11-25T01:46:00.002-06:00

gainesville's gorgeous. TRAFFIC'd. big time. drove this last year, this time actually. glad for miles to cover, glad for miles that do get covered. glad to be here. happy thanksgiving, friends.

sovereign review

2010-11-13T12:30:00.001-06:00

leicester bangs out a new review of the album, by kev a

http://www.leicesterbangs.co.uk/oct10-12.html

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most this amazing day

2010-11-12T02:33:00.003-06:00

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past life

2010-06-05T20:52:00.003-05:00

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stuff

2010-06-05T18:07:00.002-05:00

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more wacked vegas

2010-06-05T16:31:00.002-05:00

(hunh? what were we thinking??)

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studio city/las vegas 2003

2010-06-05T16:24:00.001-05:00

featuring, the stunt squirrel and the luxor

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redwoods

2010-06-05T15:56:00.001-05:00

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silverlake 2005

2010-06-05T15:32:00.001-05:00

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Angel city

2010-05-15T02:25:00.001-05:00

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yello flow'rs-again

2010-05-09T16:40:00.001-05:00

yella flow'rs agin

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yellow flow'rs

2010-05-09T16:38:00.001-05:00

Sent from my iPhone

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the shit & the shitola

2010-04-18T10:48:00.005-05:00

tag words. scary thing in a world where, hey! guess what? the library of freakin congress, where you couldn't einstein your way through their insane copyright submissions for the last hundred years, now has every damn thing you ever didn't think the better of saying, er tweeting logged into their space pod for the future archive. aint it grand.

problem is, this here blog is about as effective for addressing the problem as say, all my others about the war and the other war, and the other wars too. ie, not at all. just more plethora. the new prez can still walk right over constitutional anything and institute whole new law forms any day he like. so can congress. so apparently can the library of congress. aint no thang.

redress? petition? riot? nope. file paperwork to the supreme court and keep working your day job while you wait for the reply. and the re-filing. and the delays. and the lost case, and the re-filing. and then at last, 18 months later, a court date to present any additional substantive materials to demonstrate why you think it is un-f'ing speakable that without signatures or agreement or privacy considerations or any constitutional regard whatsoever, we now have our not-private-because-they-are-posted-to-the-public-timeline conversations logged for posterity. be so cool if everyone in there filed copyright suits against the LOC, infringement and royalties and the whole nine yards ;) just think, 50 million lawsuits, how fun.

allow me to illustrate a timeline: wire-tapping circa watergate. "security" hidden cameras installed in every parking garage, and then every mom and pop in the country. "this conversation may be recorded for training purposes". i'm not cranky, i just like to be asked. based on my understanding of the inherent qualities of being an american, most esp that stuff about speech/press/assembly/redress rights to. obeying the posted speed limit on a public roadway-fine; it's a given. archive my speech which is... copyrighted by me and me alone? first you need my signature, then you need to pay me a royalty.

going through the airport the other day i had my boots fondled and then my scarf and then me, and a wet cloth passed over some materials to see if any "residue" showed up- i assume they were looking for semen stains or something, blood spatters? they said something about explosives and such but how my boots would've gotten into that sort of scrape i can't imagine. the touching and fondling is bad enough, these frigging pervs can't just get the fuck out of my way and let me travel in peace without a bunch of mindless kowtowing to the biggest scam since the clotheless emporer. but then, talk of explosives? is that an accusation? cuz i like to know when i am being accused of something. or anyone else is either.

sure takes the fun out of flying. i love flying, i love airports. watching planes take off and land is an old pasttime of mine, i love it. if i ever feel out of touch with say the larger picture or the world pulse, i just go watch the flights at the airport and try to imagine how many people with how many lives and stories and best dinner outfits are packed and standing inline, waiting to see whomever in a handful of hours on the other side of the world. and each one? full up with: dreams, of their own, for loved ones, hopes, real and imagined stories-every holy thing all gathered up and it's only 9 am and there's still a whole day of flights left. (btw. the number of tag-triggers in this one post is now huge.)

this country has finally dumbed down so completely no one even remembers a time when you were actually expected to think for yourself, and speaking up was how to impress, not get hit w the storm troopers' taser. it's fucking terrifying out there. if i hear one more person actually say president obama with respect i think i'm going to vomit. like the man's name makes him any different from the last guy. and saying it has anything to do with his color just makes you out for the racist you actually are.

pink emergen-C is my friend

2010-04-16T12:27:00.001-05:00

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musicians project

2010-02-19T23:23:00.045-06:00

Musicians Project, a documentary

you gotta wonder. wondering's good ;)

leader ships

2010-02-17T22:33:00.003-06:00

no doubt: planes are flying a lot higher than they used. i know i've mentioned it before but if you do it a lot, you really feel that. it's HIGH up there! serious. the air's all thin and really cold, y'know, birds don't even want to do that. i don't know im a land animal maybe, not some damn moon rocket experiment.

it's nice not to have all the knocking around and pockets of that hilarious word "turbulence". actually, "turbo lance" when things start flying but don't let me make you nervous. hmm.

ok enuff about too-high airplanes. back to me: what was i eating? kale in a little apple cider vinegar bath, really subtle, and a ginger-miso tofu steak (whatever, i like it) and short grain rice w homemade gomashio. in the key of d.

d because the song ive been working on putting down is in d. d because the song i have stuck in my head that someone else is working on is in d. on the violin that's d for "deserves". and because i was ruined early on violin as a youngun, i cant make my mind remember any other lineup but violin lineup: e,a,d,g. ask me what guitar string im playing and i have to convert, first to violin and then piano-and finally guitar. that's the order i learned em in but not properly so that's how i remember. move from first position fingering to third and everything changes again.

reminds me of this little breakfast place just outside the grand canyon, they had little place mats with the fret and strings of all kinds of instruments. kind of thing you take with you when you get the check; that, and matchbooks.

when in the course of human events

2010-01-20T12:10:00.001-06:00

"whom does the grail serve?"
la folie perceval, 1330 a.d.

these are pictures of the bronze? sculpture at the rothko chapel in houston, a place you absolutely have to stop in at if you're in town; next to rock n robin vintage guitars which is just around the corner ;) it's the place.

oh and btw, rnr guitars aren't making those bumper stickers with their logo anymore. i was extremely bummed to find out cuz i had just sold a guitar with my last one on the case. boy, end of an era all over the place! cafe des artistes?! found out literally walking past on west 67th: gone last august. hunh? baby greens in austin? the drive-thru salad place where you could get great soups and a salad rollup and tea and be on your merry way...they were opening other branches all over town and then in oct: gone. all of em.

i thought the slow evaporation of pay phone booths was eerie but that weren't nuthin.

this yr

2009-12-27T11:14:00.012-06:00

this year nothing's the same, traded pinecones for cactus on a southern rail
drove out east then i went the other way, there aint no way out of this passion play

late last summer was so hot and dry, had an ex lover nearly take my life
hit my head on the pavement, everything went black now i dont remember aint no going back

come along december got a call from new york, my brother's sick and falling, needs me to bring him back
doctor's rounds at midnight in the iseeyou, took until the new year to know he would pull through

home a coupla weeks it's my daughter in berlin: "mama, fly over and help me for the trouble i'm in"
lonely surgeon's theatre in a language she dont even speak, me i cant fly, wont have my passport this week

now it's coming on for spring, voice of the turtle is heard, im a changed person since my daughter's been hurt
call from the wilderness, gulf of mexico: my sister's husband took his life, seems he had nowhere left to go

she took him everywhere for treatment but they said he couldn't pay, tried to get him some relief, take his pain away
on a wednesday afternoon just him and a thirty-eight, put a bullet in the place where his promise lay in wait

now it's late summer again, months have gone since then, seen a lotta loved ones with the look of change about them
seems we're all in this together and some hell to pay, bound by bonds of loving come what may

so, sorrow's been my mother, and been my father too, taken me from girl to woman just like i asked em to,
still im keeping for me the love-notes, and flowers i've pressed in books about forgiving here in the wilderness

merry christmas!

2009-12-24T12:04:00.010-06:00

every purpose-turn, turn, turn

2009-12-21T01:19:00.002-06:00

happy birthday, mama ;)

things

2009-11-29T22:55:00.010-06:00

News

last march, my brother-in-law killed himself. he was a lifelong musician and singer-songwriter with no parallel. his impact on the people who knew him lasted. but he was sick for a year and although he went to get treatment and diagnosis, he was constantly turned away by doctors, nurses, ER rooms who didn't say but meant: he had no insurance. let me paint that for you in color by numbers: "i'm sick, i'm in pain, i think i'm dying." "well, i can help you but you have to pay first."

i've been complaining about this problem for years now, here in this blog and elsewhere. i say complaining, i really mean, i'm pissed as hell. i haven't talked about my own experiences here, but i have talked about the treatment of others i knew, including my brother-in-law.

turned out, after an autopsy, that my brother-in-law had advanced pancreatic cancer and must have been in pain beyond describing. my sister says he never rested for the last five or six months; he couldn't sleep from the pain.

that's not just policy talking. that's people that made those decisions. like, you know, you and me. some man, some woman, just turned around and walked away. i don't care if that was policy. or any other incredibly insufficient reason to murder people. not interested. makes you wonder, hunh.

Wind Chases the Sun film

welcome to the revolution

2009-11-26T09:35:00.007-06:00

got iodine?

oh, and btw, this is not a happy, nuclear family. this is not a mama, that is not her child, the man is certainly not her husband. just fyi. this girl is an artist, a young person on the verge of life, in a stupid, stupid world. being given stupid, stupid advice. and i think the world of her.

did you know that the "service" is one of the only ways young folks are offered a way into the world, access to an income and education? meantime you gotta learn how to shoot and shout but yeah, sure, you get paid, got a dry place to sleep, food to eat, your mama don't have to worry 'bout cha. oh and the education, if you don't kill yourself first or get yourself killed, sure, that'll be waiting for you when you get done with all the other shit.

this blog is not supporting troops, sending happy holiday messages overseas to the men and women overseas. nope. not. this is no happy thanksgiving. check your facts.

bk to the max

2009-11-17T13:27:00.011-06:00

just in case you're interested...
but also:

"Amnesty International is appealing for the release from prison of Leonard Peltier, an Anishinabe-Lakota Indian, who is serving two consecutive life-sentences for the murders of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. The FBI agents, Ronald Williams and Jack Coler, were shot at point-blank range after being wounded in a gunfight with Indian activists on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on 26 June 1975. Peltier fled to Canada. He was extradited to the USA and convicted of the murders in 1977."

"Amnesty International has investigated this case for many years. Although Amnesty International has not adopted Leonard Peltier as a prisoner of conscience, the organization remains concerned about the fairness of the proceedings leading to his conviction and believes that political factors may have influenced the way in which the case was prosecuted. Peltier is now in his twenty-second year of imprisonment [Editorial: this is an old article; Peltier has now been imprisoned closer to thirty-five years.] and has exhausted all legal appeals against his conviction. He was denied parole (early release under supervision of the criminal justice system) in 1994 following a parole hearing in 1993 and his case will not be heard again via a full hearing by the Parole Commission until December 2008. Amnesty International has for some years been calling on the federal government to institute an executive review of the case but there is no evidence of any such action having been taken. In view of Amnesty International's continuing concerns about this case, and the fact that available remedies have been exhausted, Amnesty International is now calling for Leonard Peltier to be released from prison through an act of presidential pardon."

What's your opinion? Is it a miscarriage of Justice or is Justice being served?

Is Peltier a political prisoner now or a simple convict?

amnesty int'l

contrary

2009-11-07T10:48:00.009-06:00

to popular opinion, bankruptcy, foreclosure, unemployment and divorce ARE a result of an economic backlash condition created by the preternaturally insane megafattcatt cyclone of american smorgasbord/buffet-style eatitallup worldbank culture; it's a merciless weeding out process to see who can take it. course, whether you should take it or not is really not on the table. as a participant in the whole wheel of it (the cult-cha) you already volunteered. i thought all this on reading that an engineer named rodriguez snapped in orlando as a result of experiencing all four of the above, and i was sorry to hear.

i like the sentiment of many older world cultures than ours that have an eye to a longer view, and maybe a more spiritual one. we are for instance on the verge of a new age, yup, it was said in Hair, that fantabulous musical with the completely hot whathisface in it in 69- and the what'sitcalled- serpent of light idea that our world is a living thing whose kundalini source is shifting into a new form for a new time. most folks refer to the end of the mayan calendar (end of days, how scary a term is that??) and have no idea what the reference is about or to. many people have written about it, and most agree that it is a time of change. hello, change, not THE end. geez. anyway, it's supercool reading, there's a book published over on google books for google-heads and those who are interested in bypassing entire the whole Publishing(not) world, -uh, that said, hopefully not stepping all over copywrite- over here: gooooogle booook. and it helps as a nice alternative perspective and an antidote to overwhelm.

and if all else fails, remember, you know, don't panic. it's gonna be okay. try not to worry. eat good. sleep plenty. drink water a whole bunch. rest up. gonna be alright. we'll understand it, all by and by.

any questions?

2009-11-06T19:07:00.000-06:00

fema

2009-11-05T23:21:00.006-06:00

no stars for endurance

2009-10-02T20:16:00.003-05:00

nope. ;)

cruising along fall is, just cruising. i'm sorry, anyone? september? ideas where it went or if it was ever here?

meanwhile, music, planning, ice chips very much, and smoothies. also, baked potato.

frankly, there are plans that are more than that: we're shooting some footage for a couple songs later in the fall, super excited about that, and um-finally? tour dates have been ridiculous delayed but that's only cuz it's been a weird year and ive hadda do a bunch of stuff i hadda do so there. but soon! cant wait.

meantime also, juliet settling into her new place, getting chilly up there i hear, and down here, getting cool. about. nearly. i could run for a full hour and not die of heat stroke now, let's put it that way. i could drink only three gallons of water a day and not pass out from dehydration, another. so.

anybody got ideas about japan? we are talking about music in japan, i keep hearing music in japan, music in japan--what are they up to? i wanna know! two fabulous buskers from ol' harvard square have hit some fun times all over, dresden doll's amanda used to play dress up and be a bride statue across from The Yard a hundred years ago, and martin sexton played every stop around the city i think but the Square was His. badass, buskers. they know a thing or two. careful who you run across and dont forget to tip! i think mike doughty still hits the subway on occasion to mixitupalot now that he's a disco-master ;)

anywho, time for.... carrots and hummus and a movie-- tomorrow's long and then: dancin. hmmhunh, dancin.

liberty ave @ liberty way

2009-09-26T15:12:00.002-05:00

great intersection.

well, the rains have quieted a little down in the deep-a south. gulf south, that is. thnk gd. i was turning into a plant.

the sounds of a repeat on a take of a particular guitar lick over and over is an old form of torture used on prisoners of war in the last century, after recording was invented. (not looking up when recording was invented.) some of us crazies do it to ourselves, it's called working on a record. a music project. whatever, haters, we are what we are.

slowly a form comes into view out of a fog- that's what some takes are, a form coming out of a fog.

like this year.

last day of summer, brooklyn

2009-09-21T11:49:00.011-05:00

and a favorite any-season song:
mr calhoon

my man

2009-09-18T23:35:00.005-05:00

eiji oue conducting the osaka philharmonic orchestra.

what's his god? who's his nation? affiliations? memberships? status? zodiac sign? who the fuck cares.

total triumph of the human spirit. i love this man completely.

(ps tho, i think holst failed to resolve jupiter, as if anybody could: at about the 5th minute, he fails to resolve, but where do you go?? i want to hear the music of what happens really, after the 5th minute of this movement...)

2009-09-14T20:17:00.003-05:00

black madonna

2009-09-09T21:26:00.003-05:00

it's nine-nine-oh-nine, ain't it? ;)

juliet met the madonna on the c or the q train today. nice day.

she still thinks about her.

what a day. mercury is a bastard, i hate him. ok, i dont hate him but he is a bastard.

missed all kindsa calls, sorry, peoples.

but i did see: cranes, small little guys, too white. and little funny seaside birds also so peculiar to the sea. and i saw alice float which she doesnt ordinarily like to do. i dont know nuthin about nuthin but that seems like it'll do for today.

oh, and, shows are going great, the record's selling like a bastard and i have no complaints about the cushy new villa i just acquired in seville. all in all, no complaints ;)

decent sea

2009-08-20T17:39:00.003-05:00

and, well, this of course:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyOrn73B0MY

august bends like willow trees

2009-08-15T23:58:00.006-05:00

we are here and it is now. further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
h.l. mencken

my mama was living in the upstairs of a small brick house on wabash st in fort worth the summer i was born. she had been attending philosophy and psychology classes at tcu not very far away, and not far from her family's home on lubbock st. my dad was in wash dc, they were separated at the time. my great-grandparents were nearby on simondale drive, a street named for the other contender, a neighbor, in the street-naming of the city of fort worth for the winding avenue their own house had been built on at the top of the hill; there were only two at the time, the allreds and the simonses, and since they didn't respond to queries about being chosen, the name went to simon. my mom would walk across berry past the bank another two blocks all the way to the campus, pulling a wagon with her brother johnny when she was little, finding places to have picnics or to see the exhibits at the science building. her mother got her master's degree in english there, and my dad's mom was working in the tcu library when they met, enabling him to get a bachelor's degree in economics and history without the burden of tuition fees.

i do not like being hurried. no, i do not. but when i arrive, i really do. there had been talk of inducing labor, and the morning my mom went into labor was the day scheduled for inducing. neither of us like being hurried. my mother's voice singing when i was little was a great part of what made my body and my thinking and my perspective, and she never sounded hurried.

such a long time ago, but also now. in much the way a river starts at a source somewhere high in a hill somewhere and flows down into the quadrillionth generation of life's forms which have stemmed from it; there is no measure.

my mother was late to work this week, packing a box of gifts for me. there have been whispered phone calls between her and my sister and juliet. i am very happy: we have started the celebrations days early, i have had such sweet calls, patience! say all the clouds. so i am patient.

the perfect storm

2009-08-14T15:04:00.003-05:00

"what would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?"

(ellen bass)

SER-ious-ly.

the hardy boys

2009-08-13T16:43:00.006-05:00

here is me and my sister practicing in the evening. i think we are quite getting the hang of it.

"human beings, in
their generous endeavor to construct a hypothesis that shall not degrade a first cause,
have always hesitated to conceive a dominant power
of lower moral quality than their own; and, even
when they sit down and weep by the waters
of Babylon, invent excuses for the oppression
which prompts their tears."

(thomas hardy, return of the native)

thank heavens i dont have those sort of problems. disappointment et al

(ps garrison keilor totally loves ellen bass: see? and see?)

two of cups, two of swords

2009-08-06T13:04:00.003-05:00

storms gathering up along the coastline every day, just for a downpour. the frogs are going haywire every evening, and we keep eating the same soup, but those are not things to complain about.

jeff called from the road, in albuquerque: apparently there are many things you can have tattoo'd on your body that actually avoid the requisite regret, like instead of "betsy" you can go for "your name here" instead. 'course if you think that sort of thing'll fly with yer lady, think again. but he's playing shows out there and we're wrapping up the transfers here.

tomorrow is alice's birthday so am off to make aduki brownies. and a reviewer from belgium didnt like the record. he said (had to translate from the original language, and i quote): "sufficient artistic ways, but the music only excessive doenerij difficult. more rope is a basic song with an acceptable body, head and tail." i dont think that's any sort of way to talk about other people, do you? mind you, dont blame the reviewer for sounding like an idiot, blame google-translater, a great tool if you dont mind being confused. perhaps the poor fellow thought he had heard music like this before? anyway i appreciate that he took the time to listen. that's what polite people from texas by way of england say ;)

prepping set list for a show coming up, thinking to sing only songs with an acceptable body, head and tail.

bear mush for bears

2009-08-02T23:55:00.001-05:00

skyping stromstad sweden at 11:35 AM on a call from my brother who's on tour at present. he called from an island called furholmen where he is doing a residency at a venue there. learned a swedish word: fargad, meaning colored, like: colored like the sky and sea (fargad av himmel och hav).

midsummer night

2009-07-28T23:59:00.001-05:00

this will be the first summer in twenty years that my sister will be celebrating her birthday without her most beloved at her side.

this is the first summer ever, that my daughter is envisioning her life as a young adult, stepping into the world, dipping her toe, checking to see.

this is the first year i have ever considered taking my time, really, and moving into next things with some grace.

ain't that hilarious.

"meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are headed home again."

ain't it funny that

"the world will call to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting,
over and over again announcing your place
in the family of things."

you can see why?
i'm not on tour? yet? still?

car 54 where are you?

2009-07-24T12:22:00.003-05:00

was in the subject line of an email this am from a friend of mine back in atown-- though it may look as though i've fallen off the planet according to my mailbox back home and my tour schedule at pollstar.

no worries. rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. unquote.

multo jactatus

2009-07-23T17:37:00.006-05:00

latin. meaning, much buffeted. even if you're not latin.

in some companies, they employ folks to wear a moose head and impersonate micky the safety moose, who then sit across from you as you sit at your desk just trying to get your day done. either he's putting it on, or taking it off, deadpan, no smile, all somber. micky the moose.

i'm thinking of a full on werewolf suit, myself, just to wear when answering the front door. why hold back?

whitman said: all things of the universe are miracles, each as profound as any. he said it on a card with a huge oak tree on it from juliet today, and i thought he said it well.

i am absolutely

2009-07-21T02:42:00.002-05:00

not past losing stephen. i realize days and weeks have passed, and every day my sister seems to move her expressions into kindness and consideration, but i just think that's too high a cost, and completely unfair.

nothing is the same. it never will be.

every day she goes and sits in session while her good friend daniel puts one of the many cassettes she's brought in for him into the deck for playback, to transfer to disc, and they sit for eventually hours, listening for some snippet of conversation in among the electrifying, totally devastating beauty of his music, and hope for some piece of thread or wooly fuzz that might turn out to be something that will place him here on the earth where we can see him, in a red button up shirt and jeans and a pair of cowboy boots- something that makes his death less consequential. so we can eat dinner. and she can take a shower.

fuck death, man. i've had it.

meantime, we are dreaming up a dream garden for the new place, and already planting (altho anyone familiar with the western gardener's manual would know, you DON'T start planting these till later in the fall): squash, rutabagas, hellebores, rhubarb. roses.

pina bausch

2009-07-02T19:43:00.002-05:00

posting on pina's life

"from the top of this hill, the world looks very big."

2009-06-07T19:12:00.000-05:00

hilarious: ive prob already quoted this but it's right anyway:

two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and sorry I could not travel both
and be one traveler, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

then took the other, as just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim,
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that the passing there
had worn them really about the same,

and both that morning equally lay
in leaves no step had trodden black.
oh, I kept the first for another day!
yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

(Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken)

been walking around on the upper eastside- of america, that is. man it's been awhile, seen a bunch of folks i havent seen in a long time, got to see juliet perform two pieces last week (link ups later, too dang tired on the road) but shit you should see em. funny how the air smells so different here, and summer actually looks like summer. comes from growing up an easterner even tho im texan. hoo haa.

so of course everything's changed and nothing really has too. no, everything's changed. anyway i have. the record has taken so long to get done with, all the details and whatnot, and in between planning the next projects, doing next projects, travellin. coffee, of course, and a whole lot of it.

today there was swimming down in the springs off in c'ville and the day was hot and perfect. apparently they're redoing the gravity, to be bigger. for more big number of people in venue. whatever.

summer's comin on, is all. nothing for it.

for shizzle

2009-05-29T02:58:00.000-05:00

late spring rain

2009-05-22T12:13:00.006-05:00

and an armadillo. funny little crusty prehistoric thing seems to be living in the back yard but very much minding his own business. what do they eat??!

vas difference

2009-05-14T07:07:00.000-05:00

may kafuffle

2009-05-12T11:42:00.000-05:00

back in december i flew back from new york to record or re-record a song i wrote with a very talented dude a couple years ago. we had been asked to put it down for this anr dude who had liked it, but it was much later and a record in between and late, so we had to get it down. so we did with this really nice engineer over at 5th st and it was so surreal, sunset on new year's eve and just off the plane and plans for a bite over at the blue dahlia but later, on my porch, i watched the sky change for a bit. ive said before, austin is about as nuts for fireworks display as anywhere ive been.

working on too many projects at once. but loving it. everything takes way longer than it should in my timeline, im ready to move on years before things actually happen-- but shit's real, so there you have it.

i totally have caught dyslexia or something, i notice i am reversing some letters in writing that i never used to do, totally wierd. or is it weird? i cant remember anymore and only remember to feel rhythm and harmony and heat. been taken over by necessity, who is my mama.

stephen mccarthy may 4, 1952-march 11, 2009

2009-03-11T20:02:00.004-05:00

most old comrades have passed away
new ones are hard to find
they say that we're in a time of war
but when was there any other kind?
light and dark, love and hate
to some stand side by side
but to those i've loved and who've loved me
we've fought together in the great divide.

(the great divide by stephen mccarthy 2008)

again

2009-02-25T12:18:00.000-06:00

rising

2009-02-24T10:00:00.001-06:00

nonpareils

2009-01-31T21:29:00.003-06:00

did you hear aretha sing at the inaugural? ;) did you see her ribbons?

mr bobby kennedy said this when king died:

"this is a time of shame and sorrow. it is not a day for politics. i have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in america which again stains our land and every one of our lives. it is not the concern of any one race. these victims of the violence. they are human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. no one – no matter where he lives or what he does – can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. and yet it goes on and on. why? what has violence ever accomplished? what has it ever created?

no martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by his assassin’s bullet. no wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. a sniper is only a coward, not a hero. whenever any[one]’s life is taken by another unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence – whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

abraham lincoln said:

"among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet;
and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.”

yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores both our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. we calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. we glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. we make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire any weapon or ammunition they desire.

too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force.
we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others.
some americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home.
some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.
some look for scapegoats, others for conspiracies, but this much is clear:
violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation,
and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soil, from our soul.

there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. this is the violence of institutions. indifference and inaction and slow decay. this is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. this is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

this is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. and this too afflicts us all. i have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. for a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. when you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of color or belief or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies – to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.

we learn, at the last, to look at our bothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. we learn to share only a common fear – only a common desire to retreat from each other – only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. for all this there are no final answers.

yet we know what we must do. it is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. the question is now what programs we should seek to enact. the question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence. we must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. we must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. we must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution. but we can perhaps remember – even if only for a time – that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek – as we do – nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again."

aeschylus:

2009-01-30T19:26:00.004-06:00

"even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of god."

ok, someone said to me that quoting the mary poem yesterday was morbid. please! we're immortal! ;)

one day we fall fall down forever

2009-01-29T12:42:00.002-06:00

i know, ive quoted that before. it's just such a great line. (patti griffith, you know)

well its january again somehow, almost not, so figured i better get something said about january while i still could and it being officially january. i notice this year i know a slew of people with january/february birthdays-- that means a lot of aquarians. i can tell you, ive never had a slew of aquarian friends before, just the few handful of the most important folks in my life. if you dont know about aquarians, go figure it out, you should, along with the rest of that wheel. but aquarians are a special breed and thats just that. january? dunno, its the new year, its generally cold no matter where you are, its a beginning time, or anyway winter. i suppose its groovy.

what do i recall about january: it always precedes or follows a more significant time, like the holiday, or juliet's birthday, or just getting back from bodensee and starting classes again. i remember a new year's eve (technically, we're talking december, tho, right?) outside lake constance in the mountains sitting in a pool of hot springs watching the full moon rise and the steam with it. see what i mean? january is parenthetical, always just before or after something significant.

anywho, the record is coming along, artwork y'know, and making of copies. warner brothers said i had to do it all myself ;) blah blah blah, i dont know, who wants to hear about that? the minutia of what it takes to see something through from inception to you have it in your freakin hand? i mean, besides me? its pretty remarkable stuff actually, the storyline that happens in getting there. that shit would make some rock hard movies, lemme tell ya. course, that takes doing too. but the thing is, - nevermind.

let's see, what flowers in january? hellebores, one of my absolute favorites. some winter cherries and honeysuckle (oddly), but also depending on the zone you live in, paeonies, jasmine, quince, roses, camellias, etc. i have visited some of the most outrageously beautiful gardens, sissinghurst, the david austin nursuries up in northern england, a private botanical garden in portland oregon that had maybe the best beds and paths of any ive ever seen. not that you asked.

eventually, it all gets done. one day we all fall down forever. see?

broken strings

2009-01-23T05:22:00.002-06:00

here

new day

2009-01-20T10:58:00.007-06:00

for healing, for change and for united community, it's a great, great day, for "the risk-takers, the do-ers, the makers of things", by "joining imagination with common purpose, courage with action" when "only hope and virtue can survive". "repairing the things in need of repair." say amen, say amen, say amen.

works for me ;)

rylance dances

2008-12-12T01:24:00.001-06:00

curtain call

cultural activism, part 71

2008-12-07T20:42:00.007-06:00

Peter Sellars - Cultural Activism in the New Century
ABC TV,
August 19, 1999

Peter Sellars:

The main thing of course is this question of how do we deal with people, things, aspects of life that do object to us, people who actually want to kill you, people who have a very different idea of what the right next thing to do in life would be, people who in short are not like us. People who you know we tell ourselves they're terrorists, they're this, they're that, we have our names for why we won't deal with them. But here they are, they're not going anywhere, and maybe we're the ones that need to go somewhere. This question of how it is we take in that thing which is most opposed to us and who we are, who we think we might be, and that who we might be, who we think we might be part is maybe a conclusion we reached prematurely, maybe there is more to come in our lives, and maybe too early on we accepted a certain identity, and maybe life has something larger in store.

Are we open to that, or are we closed to that? Every day the entire world is knocking trying to change your life and say wait a minute, you have no clue yet. And if you're living well the challenges get more and more frightening.

What I'm really interested in is theatre and artistic practice as a way forward in a period where shall we say the major international issue is security, where the banking system was set up on the basis of security, where a whole series of things were told national security requirement, and of course the surprise is there is no security. The Bank of Australia has demonstrated that very profoundly. Life isn't about security at all, something else has been prepared for us.

I attended this last week here in Adelaide a very powerful show about the working class and whether we're afraid of it or not. And of course I took that very personally because coming to direct the Adelaide Festival where it says on every number-plate, 'South Australia the Festival State', and you say ok we have a cultural obligation to participate in the lives of everyone with a bumper. What role are we playing in the lives of working class people? What role are we playing in the lives of working class people who are for example out of work? Human productivity is a cultural question before it's an economic one. What does it mean that people are motivated and empowered to create, to shape their environment, to shape their destiny instead of simply respond to conditions that are imposed?

At what point does one engage at the root of a problem what it means when we say depression? Depression is an economic term, it's a very powerful term at the end of this century. I come from a country that has the best economy it has ever had in its history. The American economy dominates 50 per cent of the world economy, and these are the good times. Now how is it that in the good times just about once a week there is a massacre in an American city. Just about once a week now. Your kids are trying to kill each other. And you can drop bombs anywhere you like all over the world because you have no official enemies left who can tell you to stop except your own kids, except the person next door who takes out a sawn-off shotgun. A culture of violence, it is so deep.

And I accepted this job in Australia because Australia is at this beautiful moment, shall we say it's a little behind and that's a plus! And I'm here to say don't go there! The results are in. These are no longer ideological questions and can no longer be treated as an ideological battlefield. The issues of multiculturalism, the issues of reconciliation, the issues of the cultural faces whereby we don't kill each other are not ideological, they are human. And we are talking about the function of the humanities in building a society where there might actually be safety, where security is based on an understanding among peoples not who has the biggest army for the moment. Where security is based on the ability to talk, to share and to be honest across very painful hugely controversial ugly questions. And instead of just skirting around them and acting like they'll go away because they won't, how you address them directly with the people concerned. Not make policy on behalf of those people because you know what's good for them. We've had a terrifying period of that which is now I hope thankfully drawing to a close. Very good intentions based on profound, profound uninformed cultural viewpoints.

What one generation thinks is the way to help turns out to be viewed by a later generation as an atrocious gesture. How could you take children from their parents systemically for generations? How could you think that would be helpful? People genuinely did. Proudly. Proudly. Fine people, proudly did something that a later generation regards as an atrocity and for which we are paying the price over and over and over and over and over. Now we all think of ourselves as fine people, we're good we know that. How is that we can begin to interact with people in a way that's not cultural destructive. Getting past the ideological barriers into a place where actual communication's possible.

I was very interested to see this show about the working class two nights ago. It's amazing the word 'working-class', who is everyone else and I'm just still trying to figure that out. And it was interesting seeing actors trying to deal with the troubles of young homeless teenagers on a theatre stage. In fact in Los Angeles where I come from we've been engaging in a form of theatre that is slightly more direct and I know there are some examples in Australia but I just want to give some examples I'm familiar with. There's one important theatre company called 'Los Angeles Poverty Department - LAPD and it's a theatre of and by homeless people on skid row in Los Angeles. Those of you who have visited skid row in Los Angeles know it's not a very pretty sight, mostly only visited because you got lost downtown where every two blocks turns into a fresh nightmare. Downtown Los Angeles is shocking because the giant world headquarters of the company that is responsible for our fabulous economic success stands next to a row of refrigerator boxes which are filled every night. Every morning at five am city workers come with hoses and hose the boxes down to get the people who are sleeping in them off the street and throw the boxes away. So one of the tasks of a homeless person in Los Angeles is to find a new box every day. So they work hard. And we've solved the homeless problem in some way and the city of San Francisco, the new mayor, Willie Brown has decided to give them ticket citations fining them, fining a homeless person 75 dollars for remaining in the same place longer than five minutes, that is the solution to homelessness. And I wish I could say it's a crackpot proposal, it is law, and it is currently being enforced.

Now I come from a country that in the late 20's and early 30's took people who were out of work and asked them to build new roads, new hospitals, new schools, new libraries, new post offices and build a country, and build the infrastructure of a great country. And all of those people out of work in the Depression built the America that could enter World War 2 heroically. And right now in city after city, town after town the finest architecture is the school that was built by the WPA, Works Progress Administration workers. Homeless and jobless people who are given a home and a job and a purpose and said let's build the society together.

What's being built in America in the next five years is 13-billion dollars of new prisons. We now have the largest prison population in the world, and we're defunding the schools at the same time. The three strikes rule and if you ever hear anybody here say the word zero tolerance please show them zero tolerance. Three strikes means the third time you're arrested and convicted for anything no matter what you are put in prison for the rest of your life. This is happening to young 19-20 year old individuals who you know get caught with small drug doses or something and of course right now in the last year in California we've had cases of someone getting their third strike for stealing chocolate chip cookies, for stealing a slice of pizza, a young man goes to prison for the rest of his life. The same bill that introduced this removed all educational programs from the prisons, so you can spend your life there but not get an education. This law is applied 17 times more frequently to people of colour than to other people.

I'm saying these things because again the statistics, the results are in. Please don't think this is some wild idea being proposed, this has been on the law books and has been enforced and we have the results. So you're talking about images of success and images of failure, and you're talking about a city you'd like to live in, a society you want your children to grow up in, and you're talking about who's safe and why and what will it take to make everyone safe. You're talking about security.

Los Angeles Poverty Department did an amazing thing. It made shows with homeless people in which a lot of the things that came out in the show that's right now at the festival centre, came out but they were not spoken by actors, they were actually spoken by homeless people who themselves had experienced the things they were talking about. Now two things are very important. One is you know if you've talked to a homeless person much, homeless people tend to be loners and to tend talk in monologue or not talk at all, and it's a rather asocial gesture and when you learn where people came from, what happened that made them decide to leave everything, or the violence with which everything left them, it's pretty shocking. It's an extreme human state, and yet in other societies say old Russia, India, these are holy people. You look into the eyes of the homeless wandering person and you see the face of God. And in society after society this is a divine presence entering your life. The traditional Russia is how you take care of the holy fool.

LAPD's performances are wild events because you don't know from night to night who's going to show up to perform. You don't know how long they're going to decide to go tonight, crazy. The performances themselves put everyone in the room at risk, and yet the main risk has been in your whole life that you're too scared to go up to a homeless person, and when you see a homeless person you walk by them without looking, and act like you didn't see them. And a Los Angeles Poverty Department performance you find yourself for a couple of hour in the room with the very people you were trying not to see or deal with. And of course in this age of exploitation politics people like homeless people are used by certain politicians as a way to whip up a public storm, and so we have a giant debate about what to do about all those people on welfare. The debate which of course is held among people who are not on welfare, and we never actually hear from the people who are on welfare at all. The shocking thing in America was for the homeless debate to be taken up by homeless people where for the first time actually you're talking to somebody who is homeless about the reality rather than a series of judgments that have been passed by a series of other people who are paid to deal with them.

The shock of these performances is the information you get has nothing to do with the information you've read about or have seen on the made-for-tv movie of the person in a raincoat lurching through the street. In fact none of the stereotypes are true. In fact as you start to learn about who people are and what is moving through their lives, you change completely your attitude to how to deal with the homeless question, and what that question is in your life. And you will vote differently next time.

What's it about? Well if I may use the term in investigative lecture or as I like to think of it, the instigator address, it's about primary research. It's about most everything in our lives we have learned at a distance, twice removed, we're busy judging somebody that we saw for ten seconds on television, we say oh that person. What do you know about that person - nothing - does that stop you from making your judgment? No. If you stop and ask yourself how much you actually know from personal experience of most opinions you have, you would find that most of your opinions are utterly worthless. And yet they're the basis for voting, for social policy, for deciding what's good for other people, etc., etc., etc.

The arts are about primary experience. The arts are not about a move, the arts are about eclipsing the distance, the arts are about saying you're now in that person's shoes, the arts are about understanding that someone else's problem is your problem, and that probably your own problems which you're not telling anyone about are way closer to that person in the street than you're willing to admit. And the fact that you won't admit that means that you can't deal with your own problems either.

So the question in the arts is how you break through this wall that we all have, this mediatised wall that prevents most of us from engaging in our real environment and changing it, entering it directly, experiencing it totally, not through a membrane but actually touching. Actually saying we're all here for each other, and whatever needs to be changed or fixed or adjusted in the world is the same thing that always needed to be adjusted. You know that actually the problem of being human hasn't changed at all. I mean yes we have computers but so what? Because that's not the real issue. And yes society goes fast supposedly. I think I may have mentioned I did a concert last year with a great Indian Dhrupad player, profound man who sings on a single tone for an hour. And when I met him I said well you know you practice this very very slow artform, what is that like in this very fast society? And he said to me life is always slow, it's just your brain that's fast. And I think you know when you talk to people who are trying to deal on an Aboriginal issue with Aboriginal people and say oh it's taking forever. Yes, yes, correct, hopefully, because God knows future generations are not going to be proud of our quick fixes, they're nothing to brag about. The question is what will it take to allow ourselves to do something slowly, to spend the time that it takes to make a friend, to spend the time that it takes to establish trust, to spend the time that it actually takes to learn and the process be transformed before we're so intent on transforming everything else.

So these performances at Los Angeles Poverty Department are shocking and crazy theatre and unprofessional. The Los Angeles Times refuses to review them, and for me it's the only interesting theatre in Los Angeles, but they say oh they're unprofessional. I want to say thank God! We have seen the professionals. What I try and tell my students is my generation was told you had to have a career, so we all got one quickly, and the problem is about 50 years later where did our lives go? Fortunately the next generation doesn't have that problem, there are no careers. Therefore find something you care about and do it! And use the arts as an act of practice, poetry is about the root is to make or to do, not to react but to make or to do. And I was thrilled by this Steven Sondheim performance that began the evening. This whole question of having a vision is not enough, you have to have the execution. Well in the society that started to execute people I could use a little more vision, and frankly that's what's of interest because anything worth doing in life we will not accomplish in our lifetimes. Something valuable is defined by the fact that it is unattainable, but you don't know how to get there. The things you understand and the things that are within reach are therefore by definition of less value. And it's when we're trying to do the things that are beyond our reach that are going to have to be handed on to the next generation because we can't complete them at all that something important is touched.

And we live in a period where we have these horrifying consultancies that are based on outcomes - define in the next two and a half minutes what will the outcome be? Aboriginal outcomes have been coming for a long time and are just getting underway, because what we're learning in the speedy society is people need something slow. We're learning in fact that there's a hunger for something that doesn't just have profit but that actually has value and they're not the same. How do you add value in the life of a city? You don't build the giant hotel and tell the artist you have this little corner over there and then you have this giant monstrosity in the middle of a city built by people with a heart of ice right in the heart of a city. They're the coldest buildings ever seen, frigid, unbelievably cold. You can't believe the coldness of what this generation is building. What will it take to create the sense of beauty, surprise, shock, splendour, mystery and fun of the botanical gardens again, something fabulous, you'd just love to be there, you go there and you feel profound well-being. What would it be like for us to invest our public spaces not with another stupid illiterate corporate geometry, but profound well-being, a place where people want to be, and where just to be there is to be different. You're another person when you go in there because the space itself invites you to be human, invites you into a world of mystery, invites you into a world of surprise, invites you into an imaginary world that you would love to live in, keeps fantasy alive in the heart of the city, says ok we know what the facts are but now can we do something more interesting than the facts. Because as we all know the facts will be discredited in about another 25 minutes, there'll be another set of facts. So if you're pinning what you're doing on the facts, sorry for you.

And the question is how can we now put back at the centre of our artistic practice what has formed the power of artistic practice through history but has been missing hugely in the last generation, which is very simply social justice. You have without social justice no Sophocles, no Shakespeare, no Maurier - these are the people who put the issue of social justice at the centre not at that margin. Shakespeare called his theatre the globe, not the corner. Shakespeare was about thinking globally about finding your place in the world creatively, not making something like they have in Chicago and say now we'll bring it to Adelaide, but to find what it is here that is a real future. The reason I came to Australia was the no vote for Pauline Hanson, because in the last five years every other major industrialised nation has voted yes to the 'attack the immigrants platform and to shut the borders platform'. Australia said after huge debate let's stay open, so I came, I said I really want to be with people like that who are resisting the pressure of xenophobia, of hatred, of mistrust, of closed doors, of privileged zones. And say yes, let us open ourselves to refugees because of course we're all refugees, and until you notice how you yourself are a refugee, you are clueless about your own life, what are you running from, what were you rejected from, how has that formed you. And then how many ways have you had to reimagine home across your life, for yourself and for people you care about.

So this question of cutting the budget for the arts which is what I come from in America, I just want you to know that the results are clear. Now in Australia you're dealing with a very crucial issues, this report has just come out - the Nugent Report - and it's about funding excellence. I am outraged at the cupidity of this approach. My attitude is the only good footy teams are Essendon and Kangaroos and everyone else should be eliminated because they don't win often enough. The crows may have been good once but sorry, they've got to go based on this seasons' record! Only feed your children on the days they do well in school! What are we talking about? We're talking about culture, culture is cultivation, culture is you've got to cultivate everything around you because you don't know where the next excellence or surprise will ever come from, and therefore is impartial, generous and a continuous activity where actually the very thing that you didn't have any hope for at all turns out to be the very thing that we're all eating dinner off of ten years from now. And what we're talking about is generating energy in a society where people are feeling stagnant and powerless, and we're talking about how you move beyond this state of social paralysis into a mode of activism which is about a movement. Any movement is not about this or that individually brilliant person, a movement is a movement, and right now we're all suffering from the nightmare of this highly individualised approach to everything, right? You have a problem, it's your problem because nobody else has that problem. What? And you're successful, that's your personal success, you fought for it and please kick everyone else who's coming behind you on the ladder back. And you want to say none of us has a success unless that success is a success that is shared through the whole society.

And you want to say that probably some of the most awesome and beautiful and powerful things we can do will fail. Martin Luther King failed. I would rather be Martin Luther King than a lot more successful people. No, he didn't eradicate racism, no, it didn't work, and yes, his life was glorious and people will always tell about it. With Romeo and Juliet it didn't work out. Hamlet is not a success story! Oedipus Rex not quite! Why is it that the myths are about the people for whom it didn't work out, because we're on this earth to do something more than succeed. If all you can do is succeed, sorry about that. The question is how do we go to a zone where failure is certain and where that is the only effort that is worth handing on to the next generation who will pick up wherever we leave off and move forward? I'm very impressed with this generation, one of the reasons I teach is because I am thrilled to be around young people who are not slackers and are not apathetic, but are so much smarter and more energised than I was at their age, I am very impressed. My students in America are stunning. No they're not marching down the street with a banner, they're just in an AIDS hospice four days a week, they're teaching maths to students in a part of the city where they have no textbooks. You find something that needs to be done and you do it, it's a two-step process, and it is what you'd owed your life to, because what we're talking about is not a career, but lifework. If you succeed at it after two years, sorry. It's like in rehearsal when a scene is really great in the first week of rehearsal I think oh well, it's too bad, there it goes. Opening night it will be horrible! Meanwhile the scene in the show that you're trying to cut that everybody says this just doesn't work, this is bad, we can't, you're trying everything on earth, it's a disaster - opening night everyone says how did you do that? I'll never forget it. It was our nightmare.

So this idea of learning to live with your nightmare as opposed to learning to run from it, is this task of culture. If I could put it more possibly, also in terms of the festival, because I'm very proud to work on this festival in Adelaide, because I think of a festival as something that's not imposed upon indigenous culture but indeed is a form of indigenous culture. Indigenous peoples all over the world never had subscription seasons. You did something when it was necessary, you were responding to a need, you were marking a moment in peoples' lives that needed to be marked, somebody is born, somebody's married, somebody dies, somebody's business has a crisis and so you create around it a ritual space. The image I have and I will use with apologies because I'm from American still, although that's changing every day, is from native American tradition - but in order to live one more day you need to kill a buffalo. Now most of these human beings were in denial about where the resources come for us to live another day, we don't actually want to think about who made the t-shirt that's touching you right now, or you know my nike shoes which are worn in memory of my fabulous trip with the Australian String Quarter on the Strezlecki last week - were in fact made in China by Chinese prisoners so you could say, no you couldn't say it it's a true statement, that the fingers of Chinese prisoners are touching my feet right now. If you actually trace out what you're touching and what's touching you, there's a fair amount of history that we're all implicated in. And as the part of the world the ten per cent of the world that consumes 85 per cent of the worlds' resources, it's important to be able to trace out what kind of sacrifices had to be made for us to be here. In native American tradition, if a buffalo has to die to feed you you create a ritual whereby first you contact the spirit of that buffalo and you offer thanks. You recognise that every day living beings are making sacrifices for us to be here. Now if you think about that, you commit to your life differently, you can't waste a day, you can't not respond to that sacrifice of a being died for you to be here, every day.

So there's a ceremony. There's also a ceremony because hunting the buffalo is a complicated thing. A buffalo hunt is a very elaborate thing that requires that our skills are at an extreme hype of preparation. Athletic skills, mental skills and courage, perception, insight - all of these skills need to be honed so there needs to be a ceremony where the community together hones those skills that will be required to survive tomorrow. In the process of the ceremony on the wall of the cave people paint a buffalo. It's not that somebody walked into that cave and said, gee it could use a buffalo over there, very nice. The first artwork was not a decorator impulse, it was a gesture towards survival, it was what is the most essential thing to survival - how do we put this at the front of our minds and consciousness into our bodies as practice, acknowledging what it means to take a life and therefore what our life has to offer the world in return. And the next day you hunt a buffalo and the village eats.

Art is about drawing that buffalo and creating that ceremony. The question for the next generation is what is the buffalo look like? And can we create a ceremony that is inclusive enough, that lifts all of our consciousness and all of our skills to the level that they need to be at? Survivability in Australia is not about discovering the next coal mine, it's about ecologically sustainable futures which Australia's the first place on the planet that is both industrialised enough and ecologically sensitive enough to pioneer. Our future here is ecologically sustainable future. The power of Adelaide is the beautiful quality of life, the beautiful quality of life is a moral scientific and social justice issue is what South Australia has to offer the rest of the world. Our task is to image the next sustainable survivable society.

So I'm in a period now where I'm no longer doing shows that have unhappy endings. I used to do shows that were angry, that said oh, everything's wrong, everything's messed up, this is corrupt, that's corrupt. I stopped doing that. First of all because if that really qualifies as news then we're in trouble, but more than that it's exactly the crisis of what does qualify as news. Is the only thing that's news is something that's negative? Somebody gets hurt, it's news. We now need an alternative information system for the actual news, and the actual news is when somebody's able to accomplish something. The actual news is not the next gesture of violence. The actual breakthroughs are not violent from now on at all. But they take living through some violence to get to. At the end of Hamlet it's not a pretty picture, everyone who you followed all night long is lying there dead and dying. The message is please don't do this, you will poison yourself and kill your friends. And then miraculously at the end all these dead people stand up and take a bow. No-one actually had to die for us to learn not to do that, please don't poison yourself and kill your friends. The arts can be used as the way in which you create the new paradigm and nobody has to die, nobody has to lose their home, and yet we can create the hypothetical example of how else could we do this. What are the alternatives? Can we experiment? What are human beings like under the following conditions? We need to know, because there's a whole lot about what human beings are like that we truly don't know.

And at a period where traditional religious practice is not engaged in across the society the question is what are the moral yardsticks. How do we say to each other this would be right, that would be wrong. Sophocles made a play about how you treated the prisoners in the last war, about teenagers killing their parents, and it's not an exploitation issue for tabloid journalism, it's about the deepest human question that could be asked. It's about how deeply we want to look at anything that's happening to us, or do we want to look away. So we're coming through a period of what could be called 'distraction culture', where most things most people go to is just to let the time go by and to not have to focus. I'm now proposing the new period is the culture of focus, is the culture of now let's just stop all this, and let's focus on what requires our attention.

We're going to use the Adelaide Festival as a point of focus for this country and that is going to attract the world's attention, because the issues that need to be discussed need to be discussed everywhere. I would like to think here in Australia and this next generation we have an amazing opportunity to take a leadership role and to face the issues that are urgent all around the planet. And to face them here with courage, invention, skill - the hard part, and generosity. This is the moment where Australia moves into a leadership role, not following, because we've seen enough examples, we need new ones. Cultural life will be our laboratory, the research and development wing needs to be supported and let's build the next society. Thank you.

And let me add one more thing, I know I'm not supposed to and probably this is violating the television program, the point of all this is that the members of Los Angeles Poverty Department, the theatre company of homeless people are no longer homeless. Thank you.

(Peter Sellars, American theatre director)

(from the australian broadcasting company)

you can also check out a pbs interview with him here.

but here is him at his utmost, directing julius caeser by handel:
youtube

odetta

2008-12-04T14:20:00.005-06:00

you absolutely have to go and listen to her speak on this interview video, its totally important and beautiful.

she reminds me so much of my voice teacher in college, fran bennett. she didnt teach singing, i dont know how folks are supposed to learn to sing other than just opening their mouths to sing, but she taught voice for the stage, which i mainly remember as these awesome warm up exercises for the throat (non vocal) and the neck and spine and body--man she was a great teacher (prob still is). but this woman odetta led the charges on the world stage so you gotta hear her in her own words and hear her sing, she lets spirit take it over. i love that.

"if you can't fly, run. if you can't run, walk. if you can't walk, crawl. any way you can make it baby, you keep on moving it on."

moon in the seventh house

2008-12-01T18:50:00.004-06:00

if yours is, like mine, and you'd know what i was talking about if you were lucky like me and had a friend named tam in high school who gave you the down low on these things, you'd be sittin... well, if not pretty then at least looking at a pretty sky tonight.

there is the most amazing lineup and i can't find any real info on it online but... looks like a venus conjunct jupiter (learn the language, man) with the moon in spitting distance, and that, my friends, is just plain:

a good-lookin' sky ;)

i thought i was either:

1 premenstrual
2 crazed about finishing this record
3 just going off my nut

all day, totally unable to be civil period. but then, i stepped out onto the porch, and looked up, and in the clear cold sky, there was this amazing sight, which has been developing for days: two pretty planets tucked even closer to the crescent moon than over the weekend, just hanging delicately, barely hanging, so delicately.

my friend judith would have a lot to say about this. i know my friend tam does, gotta give her a call ;)

im not proud, or tired

2008-11-30T15:55:00.004-06:00

you can get anything you want
at alice's restaurant

amazing playlist (no im not referring to my stuff) over at crossroads bob's for this past sunday, it was an allout fun fest ;) check it out! i had never heard the entire alice's restaurant before, that was a hoot ;)

fallout

2008-11-23T10:59:00.001-06:00

so chinese democracy got panned by the times today, after all that time money and effort. how rude! makes a person nervous to get reviews, but i havent heard any of the record yet. 17 years, dude! i thought my marriage was a long time! wow. and also ry cooder takes a trip through the mojave and all his retrospective, jennifer anniston talks about going to the rudolf steiner school in nyc and how she wasnt allowed to watch tv either, and david lynch apparently is reporting the weather from his painting studio in la via the internet-- and discussing the vast ocean of consciousness in each of us. see if i ever open the sunday times again, usually they just sit there in a blue plastic bag for weeks before getting designated to the window washing department unread. ok: i actually do open them, remove the book section, the magazine, the headlines and maybe the arts but i dont ACTUALLY read them they just decorate the coffee table.

whew.

on the other hand. our very own vice president is being indicted in a prison-income, abuse of prisoners scheme, and the french are considering bringing charges of bribery, money-laundering and misuse of corporate assets in another pretty halliburton situation, this time in nigeria. all's i can say is, let's make sure to help our leadership lead this time around, shall we?

lucky girl

2008-11-21T10:06:00.009-06:00

so. the records up on the austin music download site, but NB! NB! (cant remember the last time i saw those initials: nota bene (abbreviation) meaning to take special note (used to precede a written note). [ORIGIN: Latin.]):these are samples online only until the next few days when the whole thing'll be uploaded in final form. they're going up one at a time but just wanted to get the samples up and the lovely folks over at AMD have been mighty patient and kindly about our drawn out release... ;)

[NB: The finals are up at jenniferleonhardt.com, 12/1/08]

anyway, here's the linkolas to the music, keep your shoes shined and your nose in the air!

austinmusicdownload.com
myspace
jenniferleonhardt.com

i have the good fortune to be working with some very precise and exacting people on this thing and good thing, you'd be listening to mud otherwise. if you're listening. and if you're not---why not!!!!!!!! some good sh*t on there, people who know how to make sound sound good. im super happy about it, but hang tight, the finals'll be up here shortly.

meantime again, it's freezing! had to bring my potted geranium, my paris red, in and set it down in the living room so it would survive. i dont know if it's a biannual or perennial but frankly im performing a ghoulish experiment and hoping to make it last a long time. it's bursting red flowers at present thanks to this mild november--well, not mild anymore. what i want is overflowing window boxes, man, and digitalis and belladonna and hypericum and lavendula and rosamarinus officinalis, dude. and buttercups and dandelions. hell yeah.

plus, and dont forget: this sunday over on 89.9 FM KYRS out of spokane washington (that's www.kyrs.org or www.myspace.com/crossroadsatkyrs), crossroad bob will be doing a show on (capitol letters here) Emerging Independent Artists, which a great turn of phrase and he is kind enough to include some tunes of mine in there- so join us on sunday at 1 PM PST (that's west coast time, apply your differences as needed) for some new music and i'm making the pancakes. oh, and coffee.

where will you be tuesday night?

2008-11-17T09:43:00.000-06:00

i'll be here, how 'bout you?

The Parlor 9-11:30 PM
100 E North Loop Blvd.
78751

spam

2008-11-16T11:42:00.001-06:00

according to my junk email, i am a very fat ("See Jennifer to drop as much weight as you possibly can! Try TriSlim!") older gentleman with erectile dysfunction ("Rock her world with your huge member viagra") who needs a date ("Meet your Match!"), a cash advance ("60 seconds process! SuperFastPayAdvance"), an education ("New online diploma for you") and a new career ("Help solve crimes: Jennifer is it in your DNA?").

i won't let it go to my head.

meanwhile, LA is burning:

puppets

2008-11-13T21:52:00.007-06:00

go here:

http://austinlivetheatre.blogspot.com/2008/10/puppetry-in-austin-austin-statesman-of.html

trouble, baby ;) the run ends this sunday.

my old neighborhood:

sunset junction

the great jubilee

2008-11-06T17:42:00.008-06:00

i live in a very happy neighborhood ;)

final mile

2008-11-03T10:27:00.007-06:00

so i finally cleaned my house this weekend, first time really in six weeks. serious. dust bunnies and just dust, and i used the times sports section from back in sept to polish up the bathroom glass. i like to move everything around quarterly so its something i do anyway thoroughly when the season changes but this was major overdue. i have some amazing immune boost emergen-C my mom sent me, awful to taste but definitely cheerful-making once you get past that.

we've been slogging away on this thing, getting finals down. all weekend i kept remembering matt talking about zeroing out the mixes on the last record, and ..... well. cooliosis.

east of the sun, west of the moon

2008-10-30T05:49:00.010-05:00

i had to say goodbye to a good friend yesterday. i think life is hilarious and that the heart is a funny organ, and that it will break no matter what you do, so you may as well use it up. fully. its the equivalent of trying to bend over in a snow suit after a really big meal. what can you do except bend anyway and love?

youve heard them before but here again are two of my favorite quotes, the first by goethe, the second, martha graham.

"until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. all sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. a whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

and,

"there is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and since there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. the world will not have it. it is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. it is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. you do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. you have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you and keep the channel open. no artist is pleased. there is no satisfaction whatever at any time. there is a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than others."

atmosphere

2008-10-21T10:00:00.002-05:00

i find my neighborhood all over the tracks we've been editing: the ice cream truck, dogs, kids, the train, traffic, 80s pop at full tilt next door- my god, is it possible to hate 80s pop any more than i already do? gives me a stomach ache and sounds like all the stores i used to walk through listening to that stuff. man. ouch.

run dont walk! a trillion dollars, you could win now!

2008-10-09T09:31:00.008-05:00

now the fed will own our bad debt? all the banks? wall street? i mean, out in the open, where it's law. where are the people in the streets? the pitchforks? where are the crowds? can anyone hear???? oh wait, here they are:

LA Times

youtube

and here's how to respond with art:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/07/AR2008100703150.html?hpid=artslot

something wicked this way comes

2008-10-07T15:19:00.006-05:00

weather, maybe. rain in fact. first rain since early may. let it bleed!

so we sang 'rachel corrie' and 'you were right' from loy's collection of songs for the haam show. theyre amazing songs, you should check out his record called stories from joe's, worthwhile songwriting for sure. listen to 'why' and 'a rendition', the first about 9/11, the second about the guantanamo disasters. rachel corrie is an actual person, a peace activist, who stood in front of bulldozers down on the gaza strip when the israeli army came in to tear down the settlements; they buried her. the strength of the song is such that i didnt even know about rachel corrie or any of all that when i first heard, just that the song had moved me hugely. dont know where you can find copies of the record except go look up doppler bob on myspace, he played the lapsteel and dobro on it and he'll hook you up. but here's rachel. and also in her own words.

a particular ease

2008-10-03T10:26:00.000-05:00

loy bones

2008-10-02T18:51:00.007-05:00

(photos courtesy of bob schmidt)

roy michaels died a couple weeks ago and there was a memorial service for him here in town last week, celebrating his life and his music. he played with catmother and the all night newsboys band back in the sixties (you can read his full bio on his website at myspace.com/loybonestheband) and played with all kinds of folks like guitarist amos garrett, maria muldaur, stephen stills, richie furay, and great speckled bird. you can check out the catmother band publicity photo over here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nwilsonphoto/226916697/. the band shared the same manager as jimi hendrix whom they toured the u.s. and europe with. they released four lp's on polydor, jimi produced the first called 'the street giveth ... and the street taketh away'.

he played the haam benefit at heb and down on guadeloupe the last couple years with his sideman, bob schmidt, "doppler bob", on slide and dobro, who will be playing with us on tuesday at a haam benefit show down on w. slaughter and singing a couple songs of roy's, in his honor, and to thank haam for helping him in his struggle with cancer in the last year. join us for lunch down there, have a sub sandwich (have you had one? i havent, will have to finally try one next week!)

winter soldier, pt 2

2008-09-29T17:53:00.006-05:00

so mercury is retrograde again, my site went down temporarily and communication is... underground. it seems to swim backwards in the sky at times of retrograde, much like movement forward, as though standing still. but its not, and the movement is just deeper and harder to detect. that's what my friend judith used to say.

the pre release song will be up shortly, fyi. you can check out the austinmusicdownload.com site or minstrelsdaughter.blogspot.com in the coming week for it.

http://www.youtube.com/v/C0YFaLN_LFs&hl=en&fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/8DeszyFWL_g&hl=en&fs=1

if people dont vote in a trick election, or enlist to do rich men's dirty work, or allow their children to be recruited by the us army to do it, well, you do the math. maybe we'd pay artists instead? and there'd be a whole lot less karma cleanup for all of us. i am no less guilty than these.

have you read rilke's book of hours, love poems to god? there's one:

my voice grew in two directions
and became a scenting and a cry;
one will prepare the distances,
and the other must be face and blessedness
and angel of my loneliness.

may both voices accompany me
when I am scattered again in city and fear.
they will serve me in the fury of our time
and help me to make a place for you
wherever you need to be.

winter soldier

2008-09-29T01:14:00.002-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/v/-iTdxBECos8&hl=en&fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/Y6iLoXIpJFQ&hl=en&fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/y_cjkWevHNM&hl=en&fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/Ymd2KiP-PqY&hl=en&fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/Clq4Z3Qc2jo&hl=en&fs=1

so you thought war was a patriot's act? who could blame you? unless of course, you go on thinking it. well just to cheer you up, here's some democracy from leonard:

democracy music video on youtube

and mick put it this way, in sweet neo con:

you call yourself a christian
i think that you're a hypocrite
you say you are a patriot
i think that you're a crock of shit

and listen, I love gasoline
i drink it every day
but it's getting very pricey
and who is going to pay

how come you're so wrong
my sweet neo con.... Yeah

it's liberty for all
cause democracy's our style
unless you are against us
then it's prison without trial

but one thing that is certain
life is good at haliburton
if you're really so astute
you should invest at brown & root.... Yeah

how come you're so wrong
my sweet neo con
if you turn out right
i'll eat my hat tonight

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah....

it's getting very scary
yes, I'm frightened out of my wits
there's bombers in my bedroom
yeah and it's giving me the shits

we must have loads more bases
to protect us from our foes
who needs these foolish friendships
we're going it alone

how come you're so wrong
my sweet neo con
where's the money gone
in the pentagon

yeah ha ha ha
yeah, well, well

mckinney, baldwin, nader and paul

2008-09-28T11:52:00.000-05:00

ok, so maybe youre not so into ms mckinney, have you heard of baldwin? me neither. heres biden riffing about the other candidate for president:

http://www.youtube.com/v/955Y3NJTRIE&hl=en&fs=1

alls im sayin is, theres one more month or so before the voting. how do you counteract so much mind control and dollarsense? thats, sense made by dollars, paid for by the Campaign to Elect Who We Can Buy.

voice mail

2008-09-26T22:45:00.011-05:00

kennedy/nixon debate

i was working on a track for the record today and didnt hear the phone ring, but i got a message later from a college student who was supposed to be at a friday night party but didnt get there because there was a crowd on campus watching the "presidential debate" in the common room, and they stopped to listen. i had heard yesterday on my way home from teaching a class listening to kut radio that the "president" had arranged a conversation with obama and mccain, regarding the "financial situation". ?? really? why those two? why not other candidates as well? have the elections already happened and i hadnt heard? i suppose the ratings are already in and its a shoe-in? why hold the elections? and the two fellows "put aside" their bipartisanships and got on with talking about the "financial". anyway, here in the caller's words (excluding some color which some folks wont read as feeling or emphasis or emotion, which is what it is) is what was left on my message machine:

"just watching the presidential debates....man! it's all a game, its so depressing. dear god! you know, they're like debating back and forth, back and forth, and obama's saying,'yeah, man, we've gotta get in there, we gotta kill the taliban, we should never have taken our eyes off of afghanistan to go into iraq, blah blah blah, we gotta kill osama bin laden, we gotta find that ...., we gotta take him down!' while, um, while other [dude] mccain is saying 'no, man, we have to get to iraq, we have to kill THOSE ....., i mean come on, let's prioritize here!' anyway, it's all a game, what are they talking about ALLIES, allies for our country? what does our country STAND for anyway? who cares who our allies are? and can i ask you something? um, no matter which president we get, will it change anything in our own lives? do WE actually matter? do ANY of us in this country, actually matter. or is it just the silly little game that we play in middle school and high school, except on a bigger scale with a huge budget, dealing with international affairs with countries they know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about. but they think they have the right to mess around in their political games? it's so, it's just ... insane, i've - i don't understand. i don't understand, how'm i supposed to vote? how'm i supposed to vote for obama? i don't understand how i'm gonna do it. im so sad, i haven't even been able to register to vote, i don't know what to do. anyway, i had to leave, i could only take, i guess i was there, from .. for (looking at watch).. oh my god! i guess i was there for an hour and twenty minutes, i don't know how that happened. but it was painful. it just got to a place where i was like, allies? ALLIES? allies for our country? allies for our country which is about, WHAT? killing osama? (sad laugh) obama, osama, whatever, ok. anyway, love you, call me back, bye."

i couldnt have said it that well so im quoting again. i think its the heart of the matter, when a college student is thunderstruck by the horror show of the political circus prior to voting for the first time and particularly wondering if anyone gets heard. its a big deal. this isnt someone who was raised to have a particular view or other, just their own.

on the other hand, i was hugely influenced by the political climate in my own household, and the country at large, but at that time, when it most impressed me, i saw real passion, and engagement, because the ones i was watching knew they could make a difference and that their voices were being heard in an unprecedented way. not so now. i remembered being at the caucus back in march for the primaries and how several people voting differently from their counterparts (read race, demographic, etc) actually looked scared.

my view of watching the news is that it is a narcotic i dont happen to cotton to. its an inoculation against freedom to listen to the drooling drivel of that great tv show called THE NEWS. who's damn news? not mine. i dont actually believe i have to choose between two idiots arguing over what's the better political choice of targets. i dont actually think i need to vote for warmongers, no matter if theyre dressed up to appear like The Great New Hope or The Hip Conservative with a Spitfire Gal Running Mate. boring. sounds like another episode of law & order to me, with even better ratings. i wish this whole country would wake up and no one would attend the polls and see who gets voted in then, even if theyve already engraved the name on the new presidential door plaque, in bronze, to match the doorknob.

check out the little web site: http://www.bloggingthedebates.com, interesting discussions over there. just so's you know, there are alternatives to curly and moe dancing around like bloodthirsty bears on the abc/nbc/cbs affiliates.

we agree

2008-09-25T22:59:00.005-05:00

it's my late grandfather tom's birthday, exactly a hundred years ago today. so, of course, some oliver wendell holmes:

"Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of it's hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there's nothing that keeps it's youth,
So far as i know, but a tree and truth."

but i'm quoting again, yes. the title refers to a posting on the daily paul page today.

the anti-mccain campaign, or how i stopped smoking and drinking and shooting at things and learned to love the world think tank

2008-09-19T09:58:00.006-05:00

here, in it's entirety, is eve ensler's quote, for those who didnt click-thru yestididy, it's worth reprinting. three mules for sister sarah! (great movie, btw) and i quote

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Vday site

d'ya like the taste of my broadsword, mountain-ninja?

2008-09-18T00:15:00.006-05:00

so, it's colder. by 25 degrees. that's colder by far. i put on my boots for the first time since may. i think its harder to think in a hot climate, for me anyway. cant remember the last time i did some thinking. which doesnt mean there isnt worrying, but worrying's not thinking, or planning, but planning's not thinking either. no, havent done much thinking since i lived in upstate. it justnt hasnt been possible. on the other hand, there's a whole mess of doing, and also being, located in very different centers of the self than thoughts.

i only mention it because i think i miss thinking. its not possible to be crisp in this heat.

september's flower is the aster, have you seen those?

ps a friend, a young guy who included the note "im sending this to every woman i know", sent me an email with a quote by eve ensler about sarah palin worth checking out, its over on arianna huffington's page here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/drill-drill-drill_b_124829.html

the news that's fit to print... particularly good for anyone who's been inoculated by the endless prattle of the media blitz over the upcoming election, and who thinks that it has nothing to do with ratings and sweeps and keeping everyone glued, very good for you. and who hasnt?

iPod scrabble...

2008-09-15T22:15:00.003-05:00

(from www.apple.com, of course)

is a big fat CHEAT and a LIAR!!!!!!! no sh*t! that thing is a total cheat! i swear to you, it 'developed' the words LORIS, RAX, etc. absoLUTE cheatage, no kidding. can't imagine what makes those folks think they can get away w that kinda stuff, man! unbelievable, and i aint got no memory for much, least of all spelling, but LORIS???????????????

dude. time to name that thing hal.

taconic parkway, fall

2008-09-14T23:30:00.003-05:00

photos by juliet tondowski and devan mulvaney. landscape by some genius. new york by, well, new yorkers.

aint it great.

full moon

2008-09-14T20:42:00.006-05:00

(photo absolutely ripped off by austin blogger mystic friendsy, check out the page.)

louis armstrong once said, "we all play 'do re mi', but you got to find the other notes yourself."

so im working on a couple covers for the record, one of them his and the other, a new piece by stephen mccarthy. mike doughty stole the other cover id been thinking of doing, and he prob did it better so its worth hearing. that was the book of love by peter gabriel; stephen's is just called love.

works for me ;)

ps have you listened to "break it down baby" by robinella????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! god! very nice, and also "press on", sweet.

ike and lincoln, and liberty, too

2008-09-11T09:24:00.006-05:00

(pic here of louvre dido © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons)

one thing can be said for hurricanes, they are very impressive when viewed as satellite orange over the ocean blue or traveling some fine inlet like the gulf of mexico, just slouching towards bethlehem and all like a crude beast. before we were viewing weather like that, the prediction would come in the form of news at sea or impending skies or whatever, or animal behavior. I remember noticing, sitting in the kitchen of a girlfriend's house in sunset junction in LA, watching the morning anchors on the weather channel find new words to describe the upteenth storm that season while my sister on the phone was telling me they were driving out of the state. florida was really hit that year, everyone there remembers it, but most people don't remember what year it was.

i remember because it was the same year i split up with my husband, and the summer had been filled with hunting for a new place while staying at my friend's house.

but this year, there are again storms and in between, life. recently someone i know had to go for some basic tests that they were denied because they didnt have medical insurance and the emergency rooms in their state are not required to provide care and absorb the cost; it happened more subtly earlier this summer to another person i know, subtly because here in texas hospitals are required to provide 'indigent care'. that's pig latin for, 'you gotta give a shit'. in the classical version of the hippocratic oath, physicians would say this:

"i swear by apollo physician and asclepius and hygieia and panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that i will fulfill according to my ability and judgement this oath and this covenant: [and here some commitments to be decent and respectful to the one who taught the art of medicine, followed by this very significant phrase:] i will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick [that's diet and nutritional measures, you know] according to my ability and judgement and keep them from harm and injustice."

hippocrates was a doctor in athens during the time of the peloponnesian war. its more or less the same in the modern version, the oath, only without apollo and all. hygieia? goddess of health. panaceia, goddess of healing and daughter of asclepius, god of medicine. you know apollo surely. but the physicians are not really more than pawns in a major schematic to completely dehumanize and unsoul and systematize private human affairs in this ridiculous way to where people aren't even sensible anymore and defer consistently to things like this:

"well, my computer screen is saying...." or "you're not in the system" and "that's just not our policy, miss". to whatever degree there is a malevolent, money-grabbing mind behind these changes in the practice of--well everything, medicine, voting, driving, smoking in a restaurant, on an airplane, keeping your shoe laces tied from when you leave home until you finish travels, etc-- really it's a condition of the times to get dumbed down by meanness and stupidity but dont do it! ;) hospitals are the new healthcare program in america and all the private practice doctors are... out of private practice. i know two doctors who had to leave medicine and go into the insurance business, just to support their families! ??? as for diet and nutrition, that is the medicine.

this summer i wrote a song that i called the dido song. i had been reading (or trying to read) the aeneid and got stopped by the impression after book 1 that the entirety of the modern civilization was what rose up out of the trojan war and the start of what was to become rome and all things of and out of rome began on the journey between troy and tunisia and that new city. the story of dido queen of carthage and aeneas is a terrible story and i think is an amazing and precise depiction of what we have done with the divine aspect of the feminine in our brave new rome--er world, and it appalled me so much i had to write a song about it. i read it like the original sin or crime of our current paradigm, knowhatimean? ts eliot called their meeting in the underworld where aeneas tries to explain himself "the most telling snub" in western literature. its a damn bad premise for a brave new anything nevermind world.

ok ok, shep's gonna.... shep! (uh oh)

mmhhhhnnh.

wow, shep!

yeah.

i know i know you dont have to say it: lay off. i know. how r ya, shep?

;)

the new colossus

2008-09-04T13:27:00.013-05:00

is the title of a sonnet by emma lazarus, which got partially quoted on the base of the statue of miss liberty... i didnt know til recently so i couldnt have told you sooner. ;)

"give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
i lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

calls the mother of exiles. emma was of portuguese sephardic jewish descent and a new yorker.

the sonnet was referenced by lew rockwell introducing ron paul's new platform counter-convention in minneapolis on tuesday. he called it rally for the republic. here he addresses the convention:

http://www.ronpaul.com/events/ron-paul-convention/

did you know that it is written in our original constitution that only those born in this country or its lands are allowed to be sworn in as president? i think i remember hearing that. you can fact check the constitution of the united states, article two, section one, paragraph five. apparently ron may be the only person who might be legally nominated, according to our own laws if we are abiding by those, and sworn in: he's the only one actually born here, except for hillary of course. she was born in illinois. he in texas. plus he's a leo--actually so is obama, who was born in kenya (have you read his book about his father?) even though now he is getting some press about his neat little birth certificate to say something about hawaii, with the certificate number crossed out in smart black ink. mccain? born in panama. leastaways, thats what i know from wikipedia. wiki doesnt even reference a place of birth for mccain- how many bios do you know of internationally known personalities on wiki that have no place of birth? check for yourself. all three guys were born in august so apparently that's indicated for the upcoming election. has a sort of conspiracy of the stars and planets feel, hunh? ;)

ive said a lot about all this presidency stuff, and meant every word. it has become one hell of a debate. have you heard about sarah palin?!?!!!! could this whole thing get anymore interesting?!?!!!! "thank god our time is now!" (dot dot dot)

the whole human race

2008-09-01T12:28:00.010-05:00

(photos from austinist.com)

sorry about the lamo thing using another site's pix for this entry, its just 1) i did see some signage downtown when we were registering up under one of the tents that no cameras or video or whatev would be allowed at the race---????--- that's what we thought, and 2) since i still have this concussion thing i knew that even though i wouldnt be dashing heavy off the startline that i still didnt want to have to keep track of my little digi since i hate carrying anything at all walking around. otherwise i wouldve brought it just to discuss one of my goddamn amendments with the nazis when they asked for my papers. man! no smoking in outdoor queus, no taking pix of public events (tiananmen sq or what?), etc etc. damn. however,

austin came in second for average running time worldwide--how groovy is that ;) not that i was in a hurry--ive got this little recovery thing on with my concussion and spine etc so i walked the event and came in at the tail end with the official cop cars trailing us in. it was a gorgeous evening in austin even though apparently the gustav storm was worrying folks along the gulf. there was a moment given to friends there, at the start. apparently the governor was due to turn up and then didnt because of preparation for the effects of the storm. and lance armstrong whose org livestrong was on the list of groups to run for was supposedly somewhere among us; i didnt see him. but apparently he came in at 5 minutes under the best time at 34-something. i was at 2:10'05" ;) not exactly yer five-minute mile. there was a blackout on picture-taking too or i might have some shots...how odd is that? a blackout on a public event. or was it a media/sponser promo (nike, champion, etc?)

it was a river of runners and we were all there ostensibly to support one charity or research organization or another. i dont believe much in charities or most medical research organizations. i try to make sure to have charity as often as possible. sometimes i suppose i fail but i try not to wait for a major holiday or to make a donation -- mostly just respond to people around me when they cross my path. which is why i loved the name of the event so much and being in that group felt.. well, just like joining the human race. there was a rendition of the national anthem (which maybe we need to rethink?) which i was confused about, supposedly sung for friends along the gulf. i am as uncomfortable with organized patriotism as i am with organized religion, ive seen and heard about the abuse of the format enough to be mighty circumspect. but getting to stand in a large crowd of people lending human concern? smiling and jostling and looking a little serious and getting ready for a collective activity? --so much better than war! so much better than pro sports! but of course a great idea! maybe we need to congregate-- i do! and to stand together. sure is nice. not against something, for something. running towards it, in fact.

fyi, yo:

2008-08-31T21:36:00.003-05:00

here's something to remember about how we started up in this ole country......... written in congress, july 4th, a few years ago:

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

the course of human events

2008-08-30T14:53:00.005-05:00

so: labor day. i have no idea what labor day is all about, just that we celebrate it every year. i don't know anyone who has described to me labor day and what it's all about, neither. so, i go to the library at alexandria--er, wikipedia. wiki says that labor day is

"a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September. The holiday originated in 1882 as the Central Labor Union (of New York City) sought to create "a day off for the working citizens".
Congress made Labor Day a federal holiday in 1894.[1] All fifty states have made Labor Day a state holiday.
Traditionally, Labor Day is celebrated by most Americans as the symbolic end of the summer.
Labor Day has been celebrated on the first Monday in September in the United States since the 1880s. The form for the celebration of Labor Day was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday—a street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations," followed by a festival for the workers and their families. This became the pattern for Labor Day celebrations. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civil significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
Today, Labor Day is often regarded as a day of rest and, compared to the May 1 Labour Day celebrations in most countries, parades, speeches or political demonstrations are more low-key, although especially in election years, events held by labor organizations often feature political themes and appearances by candidates for office. Forms of celebration include picnics, barbecues, fireworks displays, water sports, and public art events. Families with school-age children take it as the last chance to travel before the end of summer. Some teenagers and young adults view it as the last weekend for parties before returning to school. However, as of late, schools have begun well before Labor Day, as early as July 24th in many urban districts, including major southern cities in the United States such as Atlanta, Miami, and Los Angeles. In addition, Labor Day marks the beginning of the season for the National Football League and NCAA College Football. The NCAA usually plays their first games the weekend of Labor day, with the NFL traditionally playing their first game the Thursday following Labor Day."

(from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_day)

so ok, labor day. a collaboration between all the cultural streams that make up our little identity: pro sports, public ed schedules, family summertimes (by virtue of pub ed sched), and the whole work force that makes it go 'round. being that i have almost no part in mainstream patterning, labor day has little use for me.

but! we are playing a little music over on the day itself so if you can make it, do. it'll be what we can make of it. ;)

2008-08-27T13:34:00.004-05:00

if you're reading and you notice that i am straying from the google/blogspot rules about postings, would you please advise? i don't want to get knocked off of here because i'm just ignorant of the rules.. ;) reading the rules and regs i guess i am unsure about citing copyrighted material properly.... things like that.

sunday funny sunday (revised)

2008-08-24T23:20:00.001-05:00

clouds.

period. serious.

well so anyway.

last year was one of those years you think should maybe not happen altogether in an entire lifetime, never mind a year. ( italics for emphasis, that's what mrs. penna in 6th grade at highland view elementary used to say.) but seriously, and ive seen some things. (too much? italics, i mean?)

i am one of those people who have wild shit happen to them. you know? like those people who just have that crazy shit go on. i dont mean to, you realize, it just finds me. now, i am also someone who finds drama in general tedious and frankly embarrassing, so any overt weirdness is already too much for me. by weirdness, i am not referring to originality, perversity, audaciousness or spunk. no, i'm talking about being a magnet for every little metal filing of crunk'd up idontknowwhat when you'd rather just get on with things.

so anyway, last year was one of those years, and ive been in a kind of coming back from it for awhile. so getting a concussion this summer while attempting to complete a yoga certification (dont ask if you dont know, i am totally about spirit, dude)-- not actually doing the yoga, mind you. no that would have been nearly in the realm of normal in this case. nope, i managed to get a concussion while more or less minding my own business.

i think the problem is, ive been trying to be normal again. its confusing, you see, because im in texas, and texas by any other name is england. and in england, absolutely nothing is quite as important as normal. (ok, even i admit, enough already with the italics.)

(montreal graffiti artist ashbal gabriel vIau, "les productions je t'aime")

but i dont know, when youre in england, and you not english, even if you were born there but moved away as a baby? you cant help staring at the natives like, hm. normal, hunh? hm. yeah, cool.

its just me trying to suddenly develop stripes in the zebra pack all over again when i just have to relax and be a fucking leopard already.

paris hilton tosses dwarf onto the street

2008-08-22T15:06:00.002-05:00

no kidding, that was the title of a piece of spam mail this am. and yesterday was no better: paris hilton's vagina bites mailman.

huh?

even spam has evolved.

oh well, at least the heat broke and now its a modest 92 or something. i have brain melt from that stretch. what happened??

on the other hand, derek sivers the founder of the cd baby site sent a message yesterday that included a great quote by abraham maslow:

"life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of
fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and
growth): make the growth choice a dozen times a day."

hella mega, btdubbs

2008-08-19T19:59:00.002-05:00

birthday strudel, yo

2008-08-17T23:31:00.001-05:00

ok, deal with this:

first, a cup of jet fuel with half and half (ie, coffee, to you non-austin coffee drinkers-the independence coffee co here in tx)

followed by a melon with strawberries and orange wedges in a fine ceramic bowl.

then a salad. endive and romaine. handmade dressing.

later, much, a plate centered with couscous au whatnot (garlic, wasabi, secret things) covered by a wine and cream mushroom sauce--make that, slathered-- too many mushrooms by far.

followed by? a handmade, messup-UP, totally APPLE'd strudel... but havent had that yet.

all's i can tell ya is,

;)

it's my birthday.

all that and the sounds of the happy sunday ghetto: rooster, dogs, screaming children, gawdawful ice cream trucks, and 80s powerpop raging next door. [sigh] all in all, a great birthday.

except for the fact of course that i have an insane concussion.

but at least we made delicious food at home in our pajamas today. that was rad. and we sang. and we talked and hung out. and so on. you make what you can out of what you have. that's called stone soup. look up the book.

a very good birthday, nonetheless. this year i plan to include more full-spectrum truth.

west bank

2008-08-14T22:53:00.001-05:00

rose and morris cooper, my paternal great grandparents. apparently nothing was spoken of morris by his daughter sylvia, according to her son, my dad: she never said anything. he died when she was nine.

i know that sylvia, my paternal grandmother was then raised by a mother she was very very close to, pictures of them on the cape in the sun as a girl, in a striped swimsuit and curly hair. rose was her roommate in a cold water flat up the road from radcliff college in 19 hundred something, when girls only went to radcliff, and they couldnt afford any other lodging. radcliff was the female harvard, and my aunt judy went there as well.

my dad went to UT back when there was still undergrad housing at the corner of guadeloupe and 28th? maybe, and he and brad blanton met, and jon noetzel. they were of course bad boys of a sort, and hugely scathingly intellectual, pot-smoking fellas. look 'em up.

but rose? she saw her daughter through the four years and into a library science degree---do you know what degrees were offered back then for girlies? sylvia was a genuis, like all the women and men in my family. they were just very very clever folk. dont know what happened to me.

goose frabbah

2008-08-13T23:35:00.001-05:00

artist to be found here stephanie did the artwork that will be the cover of the next record, minstrel's daughter. you can see the painting over on the "stuff" page and on myspace. collect her while you still can ;)