skywriting for beginners

contrary

2009-11-07T10:48:00.007-06:00

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, over here: gooooogle booook. and it helps as a nice alternative perspective and an antidote to overwhelm. another great writer to read is judith von halle, who writes about the significance of this time in a historical and spirtual light, actually a christ-centered light; this is her book: judith's book 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).

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)