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the actors aren’t here yet.
only us and the crew.
it’s a special time:
Bandtime.
There are tell-tale signs by which you can recognize
Bandtime:
the leisurely pace,
the weird jokes,
the liquid lunch…
the stories and digressions
and the fooling around
which looks like non-work
to the casual observer…
Bandtime.
Canada’s Poet Laureate Randy Bachman said it best:
“I love to work at nothin’ all day.”
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yesterday i was in berlin and today i am on thompson near prince street.
i am here to work.
i have not liked new york for quite some time.
but something this morning in the noisy radiator made me feel like a line
out of a norman lear sitcom circa 1974…you know some overblown east coast accent
going on about needing a radiator fixed…i love the idea of jewish cats from new york moving to the coast, wearing expensive ugly leather slip ons with no socks, hanging sweaters around their necks, sporting goofy signature hats (usually associated with some very waspy actvity like boating or hiking) then writing about all the long lost broken radiators and “supers” that they will never see again…
(that’s what happens when you leave home, right?: you write about it. what else?).
anyway
yesterday i was in berlin and today i am on thompson near prince street.
I am here to work on and in our play
i have not liked new york for quite a long time.
but something this morning in the noisy radiator made me remember how much i used to love this place. something in the noisy radiator made me think of bill weiss picking me up from the airport (in a car of course – bill is from LA – i am from LA) on that first day i arrived and i remember how happy i was because finally i was in a place that seemed to be moving as fast as my mind ran. me and the city were in concert..there was a sensual (ok fuck it EROTIC) aspect to civic life that made walking down the street feel like a good fuck..first time lovers moving fast and furious yet inexplicably in tandem. 1982/83: 9th and C, 47th between 8th and 9th, Houston and Eldrige. every day a poem. not always a good poem. but always poetry: like the songs of the whores on houston bartering with their johns who drove up to inquire. always something going on.
on the way back from the airport bill and i were cruising broadway LA style somewhere uptown around columbia gawking at women when suddenly i look at the road and notice we are about to hit some guy so i yell BILL and he slams on the breaks and we literally graze the old guy and the old guy turns around and glares at us and it’s allen ginsberg. WE ALMOST KILLED ALLEN GINSBERG!!! THIS IS GREAT!!! I screamed. I had come from the land of the celebrity sighting but almost killing ginsberg was all the proof i needed that this town and i were gonna get along great cuz in LA you never got a chance to run over a poet.
we made it down to my place on 9th and C and i was extrememly disappointed that my building did not look like the one Tony Randall and Jack Klugman lived in. In fact it was barely a building. It was a store front and nowhere near a high rise. I got over it. We smoked a joint with my roomates and then went to a place called Veselka which would remain one of the food temples, nay, THE food temple of my new york life from that first day til now. Veselka was rather small then. I read the New York Post thinking it was a sort of newspaper version of the National Lampoon. I truly thought it was a joke. We ate and I watched the city go by and I was about as happy as a guy in his early 20s could be in 1982 especially one who was into weird films, music, poetry and life. As I gazed out of the window I saw an old guy walk by. He looked through the glass at Bill and I and then a look of abject terror shot across his face as he picked up his pace. It was Ginsberg again…welcoming me to New York.
/s
the above was on a t-shirt worn by a hip hoppy looking turkish teenager. it was in very big letters
and it’s almost as funny as when back in the early 90’s mexican grandmas in echo park could be seen wearing shirts from the swapmeet that said
STRONG BLACK MEN JUST KEEP ON COMING.
/s
today on bbc our president stood in a disaster area surrounded by carefully placed teenagers…
he was stuttering his usual perversely incoherent bile…
but one noticed immediately that the pretty girl prominently placed to his front left was crying uncontrollably..
his presidential presence was doing nothing to comfort her…it looked as if his sub-Lassie language was giving a name and a face and a soundtrack to her hopelessness …and he became her hopelessness…so it looked like he, not the disaster, was making her cry…
but of course he is the disaster. he is also our disaster.
and if you voted for him because you happen to own property or have a little money or just think we needed to be stronger or what have you, please kill yourself now. you are too stupid to be allowed to play with this thing we keep calling democracy.
.s
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
for me its always been the wee small hours of the night…
it must be the same for you too
since i am no different tonight than you
and my childhood is no more mythological than yours, no more profound, no more technicolor, no more fuzzy blue 16 mm hue than yours
i mean,
we both hated it when she called us indoors
didnt we…
from the time you and i were children
til now night has always been the zone, am i right…the prime location of holy ghost germination, in america i am a morning person my brain works better in the light this makes me feel very adult and thus proud of myself that ive made something resembling progress
But Berlin gives me jet lag I am up til four.five.six without a fight
Berlin awakes the barnabas collins in me this town is drunk with the blood of night but we, you and i, we would watch harmless horror movies on friday and saturday evening
and they would change our undeveloped lives and we never saw the gaping wounds just the ballet dances with knives
a few nights ago i had one of those amazing late night tv life changing moments that i thought were gone forever…no, it was not a revolutionary vacuum cleaner
infomercial…no it was a horror movie…its always a horror movie that comes to you in the night and changes you…change always comes to you in the night…adulthood, the opening up of music and its mysteries, the drama of joint orgasms and paradigmatic shifts of consciousness…discussions and songs that leave you facing the dawn with a new head…change is always a horror movie…and it always comes in the night…change creeping up on you like her nakedness…in a room lit by the stereo receivers red and white lights…change is a horror movie and its not meant to hurt you…its just there to scare…like when she says I love you and catches you unaware…a horror movie with no blood…you know how today when yer WISELY not expecting anything interesting on tv and then you see something that makes you believe that great late night tv should be insomnias gift to the sleepless instead of spit in his weary bloodshot eye…
it was a documentary on morocan boat people looking for a better life in gibraltar…while willing to risk theirs on a raft that I wouldnt trust hauling my back issues of bingo illustrated across a swimming pool, let alone human lives across raging waters…the hypnotic, quietly compelling opening minutes of the doc allow us to watch, in what feels like real time, this floating device filled to the rim and overflowing with human beings floating its way to the shore…rocking from side to side…when do you ever get to see shit like that…high human drama, quiet terrifying and dignified…this is why docs exist, right…but the story goes on…and it gets more and more intense…you actually see these cats as they are on the beach just as theyve completed this life threatening journey…and NO ONE is shoving microphones in their faces…asking them how they feel…and again, when do you ever get to see a guy who has just got off a fucking raft boat that sailed from morocco to gibraltar just trying to catch his breath…no words…no interviews…just the sound of the sea and some voice over…these days people are so used to being filmed practically everything you see in a doc yer thinking A REAL ACTOR COULD HAVE DONE THAT BETTER…but ive never seen an actor play a guy who just went thru what i saw these guys go thru…the doc goes on to deal with the fact that many die on these trips and then the authorities have to try to locate or contact the family back in morocco…there were i am sure many many layers to this amazing piece of work but i was struggling big time to keep up with the german subtitles so all subtleties were lost on me…except for the subtleties of the exquisite filmmaking…just some unbelievably poetic imagery and editing that managed to lend dignity to the subject and the subjects rather than make it arty for arty sake…rare rare rare…i fucking hate the new breed of docs that seem to be made by cats who just wanna make indie flicks…i long for the quiet old documentaries…im talking that PBS 1960s shit…shooting people just being…while the soundtrack plays a conversation you dont see on the screen…when you feel privileged to see what yer seeing… instead of smug or superior like the reality crap and many docs these days want you to feel cooler than whoever is unlucky enough to be onscreen…this film was OG…the link i have to it seems to be from when it first came out…2003 or so…its all in german and i havent the slightest idea if it has ever or will ever play in the states…it was sad and beautiful…Death in Gibraltar…the adult version of one of those late night horror movies I usedta weatch on tv when I was 10…only it was real…which is only fitting…
http://www.3sat.de/film/woche/45820/index.html
The blood of Home coursed through his veins
He needed witnesses to prove he’d spilled it.
First he wrapped the rhythm in rusty chains
Then he sneaked up on the melody and killed it.
/s
Thursday, January 25, 2007
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