Sunday, February 28, 2010

On Tuesday, This is Happening

Motel Americana, a movie made by my Uncle Benjamin and some of his cronies, is playing in New York City. The promo poster looks like this:



But this is also happening: An old character actor is going to launch the film by interrupting an announcement about the star of the movie and then performing this monologue:

Gabe is introduced by the theater manager. We know in advance that he is not there. This gives the Clown Manager his opening . . .

He ain’t here. Primmadonna. (Stands) I tell him, here’s your shot, your chance to meet some new clients, here’s a little grapevine to famesville. Nope. Says he’s got a date or something. After all I’ve done for this guy. (Shows head shot or blown up picture.) Dope.

But I’ll admit. To a room fulla strangers I’ll admit. Only because he’s not here. He’s like a son this guy. (Regarding the photograph) I been mentoring him since he was fifteen. I’m proud of him, you know. Maybe not tonight, but I’m proud of him. You can’t go near the Catskills these days without bumping into a piece of his act. Maybe a balloon he tied up to look like a tuba. Or . . . just the look on some kid’s face who had a really nice party.

Shenaningans. (Sigh) Shenanigans the Clown. Prominent fixture in this here motel movie you’re about to—uh--enjoy.

Here . . . take some of his cards . . . you won’t be sorry. Once you see him you’ll wanna see him again.

(He passes out clown cards to whoever's sitting in his vicinity. Walks up front.)

Really he's an excellent performer but he's too much of an artist. Insists that clowning, la comedia he calls it, transcends language barriers. Repeat business, I tell him! No one's gonna rehire a clown only speaks grease ball. I'm sorry. No offense to you grease balls in the audience.

So I told Joe when he announced that the movie was gonna be showing here tonight . . . Joe you realize that movie's gonna get half the audience cheering and half the audience booing? Joe mulls it over a bit—he’s a muller, a brooder—then says to me, "It's a little film-we had no budget. Less than a thousand dollars. And half of that went to coffee and beer. So half an audience cheering... well, that's not half bad. I’ll take them odds."

So I says to him, I says, "Joe, you realize the half that's cheering will be cheering the half that's booing, don't you?"

Seriously folks, when I auditioned for this movie, I told Joe and the guys, “Forget the crucifixion, remember the Renaissance. There were no brooders then . . ." I got cast in an offscreen roll. They didn’t listen.

That was their first good move. What do I know about making movies? I know about managing clowns, entertainers, a little bankers and brokers Sunday afternoon . . . it’s a living. But these guys knew . . . they knew something. They knew the difference between a German lens and a Jap adaptor, if you catch my drift.

I was on set one day when my client, Shenanigans, was shooting his bit. He’s supposed to march into the hotel, led by his clown shoes, trailed by his clown suitcase. The light’s really disappearing fast, and the meter’s running on the room. They’ve got to get this shot or they might never make it back. At one point, Joe rushes out from behind his camera to straighten something on the set. Or, that’s normally what he would be doing. Not so this time. Instead, he grabs the clown’s suitcase, rips it open, pulls out a toy, and hands it off to a young girl who, at that precise moment, is walking through the set and into the impending evening. Lesson # 1 of the low budget film, the low budget life: Sometimes you make the myth, and sometimes the myth makes you.

And that’s the point! The film got made. Made! Which is more than I can say for most of the fantasies we carry around like delicate songbirds. (pauses and then fairly shouts) “Better a live bird in the jungle of the body than two stuffed birds on a library table!” That’s what my nanna used to say, god rest her soul.

I’m here to support these knuckleheads, to support all knuckleheads, because, in my heart, I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms . . . and for the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft roots . . . the bigger the unit you dial with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed.

(He takes his teeth out. No big deal.)

So I am against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, underdogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top.

A motel film. With motel people. Made by a buncha bastards who knew enough to leave me out of the final cut.

Enjoy the show. And, as we say in showbusiness, watch that last step . . . it’s a doozy.
Sunday morning: pancakes, bacon (covered in maple
syrup and baked for 20 minutes), coffee ground fresh from

oily-dark beans, juice, an early Will
Oldham album, and family--that is, four

very different energies (5 if you count
Will, 6 if you count

neighbor noise, the way, maybe
John Cage would, 7 if you count

John Cage, his imperatives, 8 . . . 9). When we are
all the good things we might be, my loves,

I hear an ancient harmony that doesn't mean
anything but sound, perfect sound.

It lasts a short while, the shortest while,
and then we forget it and chase it, forget it.

Friday, February 26, 2010

The finest thing that could
be said about love
is that it's

paradoxical, and shamelessly so --

that we earn it
by losing it.

I think the stuff
must be as

irrepressible as the grass
I'll one day be
buried under.

This one gal brought me this far
and changed me, just so
this other could

find me and recognize me.
Tell me more about the honey,
I think it has plans for us.
further proof
when all that's needed
is a nod or a look, a small touch grace
like we used to be used to:

all the women I've known
are falling in love with babies,
my god they are falling so deeply in love
with babies.

Each morning, as my tea leaves steep,
and I pour a thick stream of honey
into the glass I cleaned by hand
and set out, the night before,
I think of the ways I have used the word love
poorly, foolishly, and even
well. Love. There it is
again.
my nose is the brain of her smell

and I'm trying to place it--

is it ten kinds of soft powder,

or is it bedsheets freshly fooled from a dryer?

"But in the end, I'd rather eat a strawberry, smell my daughter's hair, or read a book that, against all postmodern odds, conjures up the intense experience of human life." says Hemon

who, this paused moment,
plays the brain of my nose

And thinks: honeysuckle
honeysuckle
vanilla

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Milosz - n. A state of mind with a cool drink in its hand

"[The] science of life depends on the gradual discovery of fundamental truths."

"I am always aware that what I want is impossible to achieve. I would need the ability to communicate my full amazement at 'being here' in an unattainable sentence which would simultaneously transmit the smell and texture of my skin, everything stored in my memory, and all I now assent to, dissent from."

"There are, however, times when somehow we divest ourselves of the shame and begin to speak openly about all the things we do not understand."

~from "My Intention"

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

#6 of Geoff Dyer's Rules:

Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.

Number 10 From Jonathan Franzen's Rules For Writing Fiction

You have to love before you can be relentless.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Been Sick

It's funny . . . since I started to contemplate sweetness, its many forms and expressions, I have been coming down with a head cold that could probably make a horse fall over and just lay in the grass. It's like an anti-sweetness, poisoning the world because, as Blake well knew, [the lack of] energy is eternal [non]delight. You can tell by now how much I am losing with each breath.

On Saturday, said cold took my voice. I have never been without it (since I found it). So off I went to do my rounds. I had no problem at the hardware store where any grunt will do. Buying fresh coffee beans was harder--I just pointed and pointed and then threw a half banana loaf on my tab as a kind of apology. After that, though, things got dicey. A haircut with a new barber . . . and no voice. I thought about drawing the guy a picture to show him what I wanted, but I can really only draw two kinds of haircuts: mullets and mohawks. (Hey, if we ever get really rich, let's buy a barbershop in some rough part of Kentucky and call it "Mullets and Mohawks." That idea alone, by the way, is like a giant middle finger thanking the hell out of this cold.) So I kind of waved my hair around and tried to sculpt it into something he could match in his cutting, but every effort at miming a haircut failed . . . so I threw up my hands and he tore through my hair like a wildfire.

And so, I'll have to owe you some sweetness. I assure you, I have pondered it late at night when, awakened by coughing, I wonder where I am. I'm on the couch so I won't wake my dear family, all sprawled out, arms and limbs akimbo, looking like a haircut described by a temporary mute, dreaming.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Sweetness Is The Saving Aberration

Not to roll around in penitential salt,
But often I see voices and so
......don’t hear them, rising above
The problem level we’re all down in.

So many of them, it seems, while well-intentioned

.........are nasty with solicitous
..virtue-mongering.
When did basking in the pleasure of superior knowledge

Ever win anyone into the good life?

One survives very distinct impressions of them.
That if one were to learn from them,

That would serve as a counterweight

For their own right appraisal. But
........most folks
Want something they can feel, and not just
Understand—and that is the faculty

They vanish to strengthen and meld with,

A kindness made rational, lit by
An uninitiated lack of self made perishable.

Clichés take root here. Render unto water

The finest kings and queens,
...so they might sleeve
Past the waste-reach of old judgment,

And down they go, solving the labyrinth.

Leaves are the natural invention of this.

I admire leaves because they all look alike
And assert no amount of courage
....doing so.
But even moreso, the geniuses of disposition
...who spy death
and resemble them.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Stone Cold Masterpieces

St. Vincent:

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12985-actor/

Just listen to "Save Me From What I Want" or "Marrow".

_______________

Aesop Rock:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Float_(Aesop_Rock_album)

"Attention Span", "Skip Town", "Commencement at the Obedience Academy"

______________

Sleigh Bells:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&source=hp&q=%22sleigh+bells%22+crown+on+the+ground&oq=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=DPN7S6a4A5TINczRxa0F&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBAQqwQwAA#

"Crown on the Ground"

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Comedy as Corrective

The world thanks you.

He, your co-conspirator,

was deeply considering

a Photo 1 (honors) style

assault on the history

of the non-moving

image.

That, oh that's America...



Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Occupation: Father

My son finds occupation
in almost nothing, in everything:
my soapy penitential toothpaste,
his mother's loosened hair
orts, containers, useless things;
watches as I pee
as at Victoria Falls,
once pushed his head between my knees
to risk some sort of baptism.

Before his birth I thought
I had room for no more love:
now when he (say) hurts himself
love, consideration, care
(copies from the originals)
as if burst inside me.

Undoggedly I interest myself
in his uninteresting concerns,
grow backward to him,
more than hoping to find
a forward interest for myself.

Monday, February 1, 2010

The pee of a frog is ice-cold. I was so surprised that I opened my hands and let it hop away. Thus I stood there, deeply moved, above me the wind passing through the treetops, and my hand cold from the pee of a frog.

We begin again. We never give up.

Fear the Bling

Themselves--"Rapping4Money"

all weekend, washing dishes and killing chores to these beats

google dat, Cloudy