The Unforeseen and Peppermint Ice Cream Pumps...

I have a temperature. A fever. For real, not the Peggy Lee song. NyQuil in the daytime. Laying and lying in a field of down pillows... I'm tipping and tapping. Mind mind is not here but there, thinking of here.

Everyday is a new chance to discover the Lesbian-Made Strawberry-Thai-Chicken of Life. Everyday is a chance to to lick the Cool-Peppermint-Ice-Cream of the Unforeseen. Ritual deceives us into thinking days blur into an unchanging circle of predictability. It's a lie.

I know...I know...I love ritual too. Being a renounced, but still-heavily-stained Catholic...I know the pleasure of ritual. It smiles at the chaos...showing it's shiny teeth. It bites both ways though. Keeping chaos at bay, it also keeps our discovery at bay. The bottom of my trousers are scuffed, frayed, and yellowed by the anointment of street-laden-burrito-blues. My shoots (part shoe, part boot) are happily worn and drunkenly free stepping into the shampoo-y bubbles of chance. *pop*

*cough*

Rapping My Knuckles While Walking Zeno's Steps...

I'm holding your hand. When you hold something long enough you might not feel it anymore, though...there it is, still cupped, loosely fast forwarding the day to slowly make. Will weakens and wakes. I will always be there. If there is permanent impermanence, then permanence exists. Zeno tells me I'll never get there. Well I'm there already Zeno you naysayer! Math is a clock. Handy, but what is clock without time? What is this ground if I not cover it? Spilling my seed to where nothing grows...sometimes you just have to. It feels good to let it out, sans the outcome. The doing and the finishing. Let me wipe this up for you.

I rap my knuckles all day...in my bed, in my car, on the sidewalk, and on the edge of my toilet seat. Should I wash my hands? Am I dirty? I must accept the shit inside me. Worms do. Everything...everything is clean. One man's dirt is another man's field to grow in.

Don't let go of my hand...we're already there. Clean and naked.

I'm On the Party Line!!!

I'm on the "Party Line"! For you young-uns...it's a Kinks song about the old days when you couldn't have a telephone line all to yourself...you shared it with others in your building or neighborhood. Damn...I WANT TO BRING THAT BACK! BRING BACK THE PARTY LINE!

A group of your friends all yelling at the same time on one line. I want to bring to fingerprints and smudges back! Digital can handle it! Let's get messy! Mud pies, dirt clogs, and spit. I mean...what are friends for?

CIRCLE...CIRCLE...DOT...DOT...NOW I HAVE A COOTY SHOT!

I'm sorry I got grass stains on your favorite dress. You put your smell on me and I'm gonna put my smell on you. Everyone can tell something happened. So what? They wish it happened to them.

Well it can. Come on the Party Line! Are you with me?!

Baby I'm Amazed...

Fingers to keys today. I have to write. For you. You know who you are. You crazy, amazing, giving person who held out your hand and said "Here you go. I hope this helps." You visited my Atom Orr Patronage page and gave to me. Just because you wanted to and you could.

In these times. Tough for all, people still surprise and inspire. Perhaps especially because it is tough.

I will not pontificate, drumbeat or ramble-dramble much longer because words will dull my feelings of humble awe and appreciation. Just know I truly thank you for what you've given me and what you given me inside. Hope. Acknowledgment that in a small way I may have given something of value to you. Today, tomorrow and other tomorrows...

Thank you.

My Weightless Feather Cloak...

I have my weightless feather cloak on. What is a weightless feather cloak you ask? I dreamt it. At the time I didn't know what the heck it was. I like the idea of it being weightless. Holding on to nothing, but connected. This is a premise that has stirred in me for a long time. Images of sandy hour-glasses spilling down...breaking them open to stop the sand, but even then we can't stop the sand from falling. I did this when I was 8 years old. My parents were getting a divorce and I had this toy hour glass. I thought that if I could stop time, I could stop the breakup.

It was a gold painted hourglass. The glass was plastic. Very hard to break. Nothing was going to stop me. Going to the garage and into my father's red tool box, I took out his hammer and slung it down. I broke it open and held the red magic-time-sand carefully in my hands. Some of it immediately spilled out, but it was okay. As long as I had some of it, I could stop it. An hour went by and my hands were numb and tired from the tenseness of my muscles. I suddenly realized I was not going to be able to hold on to it for very long. The very idea of holding on to anything for a long period of time seemed pointless. It was then I let it go. It felt so good. Letting go. Putting it down. Moments is all we have holding on to something. My parents are going to divorce and there's nothing I can do about it. I developed a faint smile. A relief. There can be pleasure in letting go.

5-MeO-DMT (5-methoxy-dimethyltryptamine) - I'm not really into drugs per se...weed and alcohol have been my only real experience up until this isolated compound found from a poison of a South American Bufo Frog was inhaled into me. *laughing* Typing this is hilarious, but the experience was quite sobering and has forever stained me. A good stain. We all need a little staining now and again. Let's just say, after my life changing experience, I have nothing against psychedelic astronauts or Burroughsian super-sticky sexed-up typewriters, though being a very tentative and respectful astronaut participant I find important.

This made me remember. Made me remember what we all know, and what we forget. We are connected. Connected to everything. We are bound together in a permanent making. Why bother hold on to what you're already connected to? These hands are a temporary illusion. Our bodies are but a vessel that will break...like my golden plastic hourglass. I am romantic about the past, hopeful for the future and in Awe of the now. Awake. Though do not misconstrue being "awake" with G.I. Gurdjieff's idea.

Now...I stop. I freely say that I know nothing. These statements I've made are the closest I've come to a faith. A faith with no name... that I wear like a weightless feather cloak.

Release...Recoil...Reload...

Whew! Another album released. It was quite a year in the making. It's always so joyful and terrifying at the same time. Yay it's finished! Of fuck...it's finished. I feel them with equal vigor and trepidation. I won't go into the making of the album, as I've already done so in an earlier blog post. I'm just letting my conjure out of the bottle and letting it do its thing, whatever it may be...whilst I look on like a child who just set his plastic army men on fire with lighter fluid...

Redemption for a Reckoning...

This afternoon I was in my back yard with my friend Chris Prescott and I saw a little ruby-throated hummingbird on the ground, sprawled out. At first I thought it was dead, then I saw the super-fast breaths it was taking to match its heart. Its alive! Was its wing broken? Sick? Hmmm...no...I think it fell out of their nest and couldn't quite fly yet. Gently cupping it up in my hand, and  just letting his head (I say he because I felt it was a he.) pop out, he opened his beak wanting to be fed. Uh-oh. Kids. A little nest was made for Humphrey. Yes...Humphrey the Hummingbird. I quickly tippy-tapped on my phone for the animal hospital, called them and they said to bring him in and the Animal Wildlife people would come and pick him up and take care of him. Awesome!Driving to the animal hospital I was sent back in time to when I was 12 years old when I had my first BB gun. The very first and last thing I ever shot with it was a little ruby-breasted hummingbird. It was the most terrible thing I had ever felt at that time. I have always regretted that day and have never forgot that bird. Flashing back to now, sitting in the passenger seat was little Humphrey...I looked in his eyes. I was gonna save him... We made it to the hospital, they immediately took him and fed him. Little hummingbirds need to be fed every 20 minutes apparently. Whew! I filled out some paper work, so they could bring him back to my yard when he was healthy and old enough. I had 14 dollars in my pocket and donated it the hospital. I told Humphrey goodbye and I'll see him in time and he can come back to live in my New Zealand tea tree when he's ready.Driving home I hoped for a little redemption/atonement, maybe not complete, but perhaps some.p.s. I did not take a photo of Humphrey because he was naked and he was embarrassed by the really big balls he possessed, and he didn't want to have to deal with explaining it to his friends on Facebook/Twitter, much less those dreaded Google searches.

This Was Tomorrow

I rarely blog with an intended purpose, because I assume a more stream of conscience approach to them, hence their apparent randomness and sometimes delusional state. This time however, with my new album release eminent on April 22nd, I wanted to talk a bit about the album and the process of it's inception, to the final post coital cigarette stage. *exhale*

It all began when I had a farm in Africa...no wait. Call me Ishmael. No...wait. When I begin an album or write a song, I begin because I have a vision for it. A title...imagery, a movie in my mind. Blank pages daunt me. I feel if I write before I have a direction, I feel like I'm spinning to nowhere. This vision is my compass point where I can at least feel I can start. Perhaps I might change direction, but once I've started, the momentum has begun. Or maybe I'm just tricking myself....hmmm...

I thought about my past work and how for the most part I would avoid writing love songs, or songs pondering love. I initially rationalized not doing them, because there were enough songs about love. True or not, I've come to the conclusion, it's not how many songs there are about a subject, but what I feel I need to explore in myself.

The first song I wrote for this vision was "Hey Now". It came rather quickly and surprising. When I finished it, it was hard to sing. There are only two chords in the whole song and it just builds and builds. The lyrics were uncomfortable for me. I knew I was on the right track if I was feeling that. If nothing bothered me, then I didn't dig enough. "Hey Now" for me was like I was talking to Love itself. Telling it...acknowledging to it the power it wields over me. Very uncomfortable...but really nice to sing now. Now that I've come to terms with it.

Reacting from the heaviness of "Hey Now", I wanted to do something more dreamlike. I keep a journal with titles, nothing but titles I like. I saw one..named after a vintage shirt I bought in a little shop in Santa Monica...it looked like a "Green Lollipop Forest". This title while very interesting to me, was a problem because...what the hell is a Green Lollipop Forest song gonna be about? *laughing* Then I thought about it and came to the idea of myself simply watching my lover dream while she dreamt of being in a green lollipop forest. Whew! That will work! Recording it was difficult because of all the very high falsetto harmonies in it. Being a baritone singer...choir boy harmonies can beummm...hard. My testicle vice was in heavy use that day. The solo in the instrumental part of the song, I had originally wanted a flute. A real 60's sounding flute part. While waiting to find a flautist I whistled the idea and I had so much fun whistling it, I kept it. It reminded me of my father and I watching spaghetti westerns and all those Ennio Morricone soundtracks I love so much. So it stayed.

Just a Dream" was actually the very first song I wrote when I began singing. I was 23 years old. It was originally was titled "Confessions of a Thief" and never recorded. It was kinda country sounding in waltz time. 20 years later I had some different ideas for it. Getting rid of the country thing...changing it 4/4 time...there was no real chorus...and "confessions of thief" was just too heavy for itself. I wanted to make it lighter...to make it fly up...adding slide electric helped that a bit. Anyway...it is MUCH better than my original version. I was really happy to finally have it on an album of mine. It took 15 albums for that sucker to make it!

At this point I was at a standstill with my album. Uninspired. Drudgery. I was fortunate to go on tour with Steve Poltz to recharge my battery, to soak up my sponge that was dry. During the tour I befriended via Facebook and guitar luthier Art Davis. We geeked out about guitars as geeks do. When I got back to San Diego, I went to his work shop. He made beautiful guitars. I played a few. Then I picked up this one and I went "Whoa! What's this?!" It was a weird, alien, yet from my planet...my alien planet. Art said it was a baritone acoustic guitar. Baritone?! I'm a baritone! Holy shit! I don't have to sing UP! I can sing and let it rest and nestle right into it. Wow! Inspiration! So I wisely spent all my tour money on it. Yep...all. It hurt so good.

I took it home and songs started pouring out. "Picasso" and "Tilt-A-Whirl". They have always been linked together so I kept them together. I began using open tunings, which I've never done except when playing slide...I came up with an open C tuning... C-G-C-F-C-E. With a baritone acoustic, since it's so much lower than a traditional guitar this tuning is a breeze to tune to. "Running Fast" came after a night on the couch trying to relearn this new tuning while watching "The Last Picture Show"...there's this scene with Sam "The Lion" (Ben Johnson) reminiscing about swimming naked with a girl. Fucking amazing scene. It stirred me. The recording took a while. The downside of doing everything yourself. The bridge was not happening...it didn't build like I had envisioned it. I must've redone that bridge 15 times until I got it right. It's just drums (from my amazing friend Matt Lynott), guitar, and vocals. That's it. Having a baritone guitar, you don't miss the bass as much as a traditional acoustic guitar. The drums were difficult too...Matt had to play against my track with no click as a guide and it wasn't matching up. It didn't sound flowing. So we do what we always do when we come to an impasse. We go to the movies. We went out and saw "Machete". Wow. You know it's a good movie when one of the first scenes has a naked woman pull a cell phone out of her vagina. A high adventure we had! We came back, and on the very first take he nailed it. Wham! Matt...you fucking rock.

When truly inspired, lyrics aren't hard to come by. I was a lightning rod and the words were the lightning. Not hard to come by, but still hard to sing. I was really trying to touch on the parts of me I rarely let get touched. It's easy to grab your cock, but so much harder to grab those vulnerabilities...real nakedness. Ummm...can't we just do a head shot? Or...even better...not use my head either and use someone else entirely? *laughing*

This Was Tomorrow" was initially just an little instrumental. Then Matt had to go and put a real nice drum part on it and we looked at each other and said...oops...now I HAVE to write some lyrics on this song! Damn...all these songs have a price. It costs to make. I was getting empty and exhausted. I thought about my timeline...my life...things I thought about being a kid...what was love then? What is love now? Has it changed really? Do I just have more words and excuses for love now? Am I full of shit? What would my 8 year old self have to say? What does my 44 year old self say now?

One of the things about rules is that they must be disobeyed every once in a while to give them more meaning, to keep them strong. I never have lyrics written before I have the vision. But by chance I had written a little doo-dad and posted it on Facebook. It was a while ago. A FB friend  asked what about that song lyric I posted? When do they get to hear it? Oh...yea...I forgot about it. I pulled out the lyrics andmatched it with a strub-ba-dub chord thingy I came up with, being high on a magic cookie. Presto chango! "Walking Snow White". I didn't think it would work for the album. It was my least favorite of the songs...but the energy was needed. Lust. Lust was needed. You can't have a love album without lust. So...weakest song or not I kept it. Sometimes the arc of the album as a whole is more important than just the individual songs. Of course this is an old idea now-a-days. Fuck it, it's how I like it. I like it that. *grin*

One morning I woke up. Most mornings I wake thankful. Grateful for my life. I sleepily and instinctivelypicked up my guitar and wrote a thank you song, "You Held Me". A thank you for Love. I don't want to sound all sappy and shit but I cried that first time I sang it. Not because it's a great song, but because I meant it. This is why I did this album. I fucking meant it.

Eight Hours Too Soon...

4:32 AM GMT

Awake. Very awake and very sleepy. Time traveling by way of Virgin Atlantic, eight hours ahead. No one can avoid paying the Time Gods their due. No amount of Ambien, Tryptophan, chamomile tea, fresh ale, whiskey, foot massage, or Brian Eno's "Music For Airports" can help you pay the entire bill. Our payment for time travel is time.

I'm tippy-tapping in the dark with only the glow of my cell phone illuminating my hands and face. My little connector. My night-light of comfort and distraction. My tempter of high priced roaming data download charges. Sailing the dangerous seas of price gouge piracy. I WILL NOT USE THE INTERNET UNTIL I FIND FREE WIFI!!!!

I keep telling myself this. So far I have vanquished my little tippy-tappy-temptress from connecting to the buzzy beepy, flash of texts and social networks...but it's only been 13 hours since I rolled into London. I'm getting weak. When true daylight ensues, I will find my hook-up. My fix. By then I'll have the city. She will open up to me all her wonders and wherefore's.

Getting to know her scent again. It's been 6 years since we've been together. Since we've snogged. Her hair might have changed a little, and a new outfit, but she's like I remembered her. Gentlemen never tell though, so you'll have to glean your own tells and secrets. We have ours...and new love will be made in our fecund tryst so we can add to the length our paper daisy chain.

Giving it. Taking it. The Devil is not in the details, it's in the wind and I am a cloud.

I'll be getting my left-handed scissors out in 4 more hours...


Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

The High Adventures of Wereman Part 1...

Walking and stumbling through the moonlit forest Wereman ambles, stambles and sloops his way towards the barely noticeable scent of a pack of wolves playing in the mountain glen next to a  tarn. He's hungry. Hungry for greasy, salty foods that need to be washed down his fur coated gullet with fermented grain and a hint of  motor oil, Valvoline...'cause he's a man, and men like Valvoline., it sounds so close to vulva...vulvaline...mmmm....lubricants. He's sleepwalking. There is no way in Hell or Heaven would he be barefoot in a forest searching for a wolf pack at 3am...but he is.


He must bite them.


It is his destiny. His curse.


He was cursed by a 73 year-old Indian man working at a 6/12 convenience store. That's right...6/12. They're 2 better than that other place. Wereman was complaining that the hot dogs (slightly fatter Slim Jims) were severely over cooked and the espresso mocha coffee maker was just spattering brown powder chunks. The late night manager overheard and yelled at the newly appointed cashier Ashok Ganesh...73...hemorrhoids...dandruff...and just plain mad that he's working the graveyard shift when he could be watching his Baywatch Season 4 DVD collection. Ashok, funnily enough means "without sadness", stared coldly at our main character and whispered under his breath an old curse that his family have used for eons. Eons, because the Ganesh family are immortals. They found their immortality from a special chutney blended with mangoes, spices, and a blue oil that was said to come from Krishna.


Ashok, muttering his family curse, set in motion the high adventures of Wereman. High adventures because if you are still reading this, you are pretty high.


Wereman, not hearing what Ashok said, knew it wasn't good. He could smell the chutney from aisle 4 and Ashok was on aisle 1. He made a dash for it, but it was too late. The curse took hold of him. A chill ran down his back like that first bite of late-night Mexican food that you knew you should have never touched, let alone put in your mouth. "Damn...reminds me of that gal I made out with until my tongue knocked her partial bridge from her teeth...yep...there is an evil moon out tonight and it just went down my pants..."


Later that night when he was asleep, he dreamed of wolves. Not running with wolves or being one, but biting them. Biting them and forever making them walk the Earth like a man and have to get a shitty job somewhere for little money, no cable television, no internet and only an old clam-flip-top cell phone. "Oh God." they thought, "What a nightmare."


FLASH FORWARD TO NOW:


Back in the forest...Wereman was closing in on the suspecting wolves. Suspecting, because they not only could they hear him, they could smell his Axe deodorant. They knew a man was coming...but what they didn't know was Wereman was coming.
To Be Continued... 

Klaus Krazy...

Brandishing a scimitar, I swath and swerve through the jungle, looking for signs of colored ribbon and long stretches of time coded memories that can be easily unlocked if you know what buttons to push and by the size and inertia of your hands that press against me I just might talk, laugh, or cough from my nagging pneumonia that never goes away, but simply sets like the sun only to show up during the next full revolution of my world which is 40 times the size of Earth, but with far fewer people and far more beautiful monsters that will lick you until your skin comes off, further still, licking to the bone, further still to the marrow and into my blood stream, tasting my salt for their wounds inflicted by glances and slight thoughts that are slivered and cast away as fast as a lash lashing into itself below the iris that grows alone on the edge of a fish pond that all the little fishes and wandering wishes stare up through the water, through the algae, through protozoa breathing and fucking their way to immortality, at least that's what they believe and if you believe, you're half way there, just don't use mathematics or you'll never get there, you must let the numbers go and latch on to the symbols the numbers could never actually touch, from there they'll show you the heart, not just the cum filled Kleenex of formulas gone South, but the means of creating the cum and all it's glory and power before it hits the ground and becomes disseminated amongst all the other seeds of the Earth that will rise up to be cut on the edge of a blade, the blade I and other wield with frenetic frenzy and fervor that my friend and stranger Klaus Kinsky would be proud of and then he'd scream and tell me to fuck off and leave him alone...


Sent from the Black Forest...

Created To Create, Create To Be Created...

God created the Night so beautiful that lovers could never sleep during it. God created the Day so bright that the lovers would have to get up and go outside only to wait for Night to come again...


I like this thought. True? Who's to say? Perhaps like most things, it is partially true. Five percent maybe, but I'll take that five percent! I like where it takes my mind.


The universal collective consciousness of everything is hard to personify. It is so much easier to say God. To make God want and do human-like things. For Him/Her to be romantic, vengeful, and forgiving. Yes...much more poetic. In a way, from my limited knowledge and life-experience, it may be true.


That all life eventually joins a collective consciousness. Good, bad, positive and negative energy in the same cloud. What we give it, adds to itself. All knowledge and experience of every living thing in the universe...this has a power, an affect to everything. Not a Will per se, but an affect to beings with the like energy inside them.


Yes, "God" is a little like us, because it's what we give to Him/Her.


I belong to no organized religion. I do not profess to have the answer. Nor want/need to convert a single being to my way of thinking. I have no judgment.


My life purpose is to create and connect. To remind as many people as I can that we are all connected. Connected to everything. Creating romanticism, hope, passion, the celebration of being the earthly human...and everything that comes with it. Illuminating our profane darkness and hidden thoughts, I find cathartic. Acknowledging its existence lends to a deeper understanding of ourselves...and to know ourselves is to know a little more of God...the source...the Great Om...the Universal Collective Consciousness...whatever name you give it, symbol you put on your necklace, bumper sticker, if you keep it hidden in the closet of your mind, your key chain or put on masturbatory blogs such as this.


God created the Night so beautiful that lovers could never sleep during it. God created the Day so bright that the lovers would have to get up and go outside only to wait for Night to come again...
Night will be here soon.

Sent from the Black Forest...

Good Enough to Forget...

When you're lucky...when the light shines through the clouds, through the passing airplane's window, the dust, smog, bouncing off the teeth of someone's smile, your dirty shades and into your closed eyes...you'll forget everything in this great and glorious moment...

Ummmmm...what was I saying?

Sent from the Black Forest...

Underneath the Clouds...

Underneath the clouds I stand, my spine grows into the ground and out a blade of grass for a fly to tickle on its way to fresh and steamy animal droppings, fecund with larvae that grows up to beat their kids and drink themselves drunk on nectar collected from hummingbirds that beat their hearts fast enough to live a thousand lifetimes and love ten thousand lovers each in their own favorite sexual position and sounds they make when they come into and all over the knowledge they share, connected forever in a mirror facing another mirror showing exact and not so exact images of what we were and never what we are, because it can't be shown in a picture but in a taste, tasty licks of the honey of being known, known and still wanted, wanted like a hunger, an itch given by a blue and yellow mosquito that takes you and gives a little of itself back, it's disease, it's dirty fingerprint on a window that will be washed off by a homeless person looking for a handout to take the last midnight Night Train bottle from the thank heaven it's 7-eleven store owned by a hard working family from Jakarta whose family were well known elephant trackers in their local region where their great-great-grandfather was born in an elephant cemetery and before he died, made the great long walk to where he was born to mix his bones with other elephants, antelope and tigers and bears licking the marrow from broken scapulas that were bashed against the rocks to remember the sound of making, the sound of creating, the sounds of pelvis to pelvis collision of the fourth kind, of abduction, of stolen moments of bliss from the incessant pounding of monotony that rises up to the sky like a spilled cup of tea, a tea of souls that lives in our skin cups, say skin-cups seven times fast and I'll give you a brown bag to breathe into for 2 minutes, 2 minutes saved from tippy-tapping on your phone instead avoiding the real questions, the real answers to the reason why we need all this noise and deception to stop us from knowing why we are...

Sent from the Black Forest...

Mateus Bottles and Colored Melted Wax...

Being born in 1967 I grew up a child of the 70's. Empty Mateus bottles turned into candle holders with multi-colored candle sticks bought from Spencer's Gifts, incense, blacklight posters of black panthers in trees, macramé plant holders, vinyl records, color t.v.'s, flashy cars with chrome and leather couches as seats, bell-bottom jeans, Herbal Essence Shampoo, Goody combs with the big handles sticking out of your back pocket, 8-track boom boxes, Polaroid Insta-Matics, really straight hair or curlalicious fro's, cassette mix tapes, CB radios, bubblegum baseball trading cards of the Oakland A's Billy Martin's Mustache Gang, Hot Wheels, water rockets, dune buggies, and M-80's to blow up mailboxes of the grumpy old men telling us to get off their yard...
Did I mention phones or computers? Nope. A phone was a quick call to meet up somewhere and a computer was something the government had.
This will not be some "When I was a kid we walked in the snow 40 miles to school and we were THANKFUL we could!" kinda crap. We are in a new age. A new revolution. The digital age is here. Like when the industrial age showed up, many jobs were lost because they were replaced by machines. We had to make up new jobs, new ways of doing things, new ways of life. It's that time again. A refresh button on the world.
My greatest hope is that we can change from being a wasteful society to a useful one. Reuse not refuse. Creation not destruction. Upgrade not throwaway. Connection not separation. Understanding not ignorance.
Time will tell. Eventually another revolution will come and wipe away what is now into a yellowed memory. Until then I'm gonna grab a pillow, lay on my wooden floor and put on my "Hot Buttered Soul" album by Issac Hayes and listen to him talk for 8 minutes before he even sings "By the Time I Get to Phoenix"...

Leaving Bread Crumbs...

I'm leaving bread crumbs.

When you leave bread crumbs, you want to be found. Though, halfhearted, because the animals are gonna find those crumbs and eat them...maybe even eat you. There's a good chance you'll never be found. Not good prospects...but it's how I like it.

I'm still wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday. A vintage brown Italian Hounds tooth wool jacket...a sky blue button-snap shirt...a brown tie with golf floral design and little knights on horses jousting...flared blue jeans...brown leather Italian shoes with square tips...a little greasier...face courser with a shadow growing...the shadow will be a small shrub in a few days. I thought that was cool when I was in seventh grade. Now...hmmmm...I don't know. I've had facial since I was 13. I like it because I stick out, but it also covers me up.

Just like this bread crumb thing called the internet. It must be some crazy character flaw I have. Seen but not known. I try to be as honest as I can writing this verbal defecation. It opens me up, and I know I need to do it. To be open. But open is scary too. It's amazing how fast people draw sides, make decisions on other people. Friend or foe. I automatically have new friends and enemies simply by being seen...to be found.

Am I left wing? Right wing? A meat eater? Do I have a sailors mouth? Is Jesus my savior? Has my cock passed the quota of allowed cunts in a life time? Am I an acoustic artist? Too much distortion? Not enough? Is my wit too...umm? Or do I even have a wit? Do I know how to put together clothes in an interesting and creative way?

All these questions have answers...and these answers will make friends and enemies.

Why do I want to be found? Why the hell do I want to be known? Hence the bread crumbs. Honestly... I admit I do want those things, but I am content if I never get them. I like being lost in my forest, but I don't mind a few visitors from time to time.


Sent from the Black Forest...

Hey Now...

A few moments of introspection. Introspection itself is tethered to our outlook.


How we feel is how we see.


For me, I have just about finished a new song for my next album. It's called "Hey Now", a nice sappy love song that I proudly say Neil Diamond might have wrote. I love Neil! My mom brought me up on all those singer-songwriters from the 60's and 70's. Neil Diamond, Carol King, Jimmy Webb, CSN, Neil Young, Nick Drake, The Carpenters and Burt Bacherach...


I need to add a couple tracks of trumpet on it, which I hope to complete next week. I always drive in my car and tool around the neighborhood listening to the mixes, production, and if my vocals suck. Most times I think my vocals suck, but if it's in tune and sounds honest then I'm done with it. I am no judge on my voice. I'm too prejudiced against it. It sounds like me...and I'm not my musical heroes. *laughing*


Knowing this, I am still happy the way the song came out. Only two chords dancing between themselves, building, always building. It's funny how a song grows up. You hope for the best, but in the end, they just do what they do. I'm proud of this one. A happy song-parent. A doting ditty-dad I am...


Back to my point...how we feel is how we see...or perceive rather. I feel great! So...the world looks beautiful! It's a sweltering day here in Southern California Inland. Do I care? Hell no! Not today! The breeze, the sky, the rustling date palms, even the angry busy-bee-automobiles buzzing and whirring 'round are beautiful. Now I know I'm under a spell! A spell of hope and beauty because I created something today. Whatever it becomes or not becomes isn't important, but that it was made. It's what I do, my nature. Succumbing to my nature is like falling into the arms of God, the Great Om, the perpetual spin into oblivion.


Happy am I. For today, for now...and I didn't even touch my absinthe yet.


Sent from the Black Forest...

The Analog...

We are analog beings. We do not make perfect copies of ourselves. Our memories bleed like a watercolor canvas. Never truly static. A little water will change everything. Our nature is true. Our chemistry sets are somewhat predictable though volatile.
My age is showing. When I see film emulsion, magnetic tape, watercolors, oil paints, charcoal drawings, imperfectly drawn circles... I see us. Skipping down the sidewalk with decay. The slow fade to black. No color. No color at all.
Why are we so scared? Why do we hold a death grip fighting change? Do we really think that at this very moment we are at the height of our capabilities? That this is it? Our possibilities are just diminishing returns from now on? Is this why digital technology is so appealing? The perfect copy. The perfect memory. Static and immortal for all time?
We are immortal. It's just that we are just a part of it. The notes of our echo are still ringing, just not perfectly from our initial bursts. They may barely resemble us as we think of ourselves now. Just as we barely resemble ourselves from when we were children. We've grown up. We've changed. Life has stained and run us through.
A painting is no less powerful whether it be new or old. It is what it is. However faded it becomes, the residue and essence remains true... as we.

524 Words About Truth...

"Michelle loves Willie"
"Our little Sarah"
"Daughters of the American Revolution"
"Stryper loves Jesus" and I love a girl
Against my better judgment
'Cause I feel like a squirrel...


This song rings in my mind. "Bug" by Vic Chesnutt. I have no idea why these particular lyrics at this moment have hit my synapses, but they have. When I think of Vic I smile. Not an entirely happy smile. A complicated smile as the man he was. Still...a smile. The world was bettered when he was here.

It's funny. Sitting here in front of the keyboard looking at the blinking cursor I have no idea what I'm gonna tip and tap about. Just exhaling. Letting go some of what the world put into me.

I met Vic once a long, long time ago in the early nineties. My old band Blacksmith Union opened for him at a now defunct coffee/record shop Disc Cafe in La Jolla, California. I loved that shop. I was an exciting time. Live music was strong and pulsing. The salad days of the old ways of music and people.

I was pissed at Vic.

Never having met him, he was late for the show. The place was packed. People literally out in the streets looking in, they were not going to be denied a show. Finally, he pulls up. Drunk. Drunk from going to Tijuana, Mexico. "Fucker" I thought... I was young. The Now me, would smile and laugh. The Then me...well...he was a lot more uptight. *laughing*

We did the show and Vic came on. In his wheel chair, still drunk and he started rattling his beat up classical acoustic guitar. His voice warbled up in the air like a far off stammer. Stronger and stronger it rose and the words spoke truth. Honey-filled truth. A Southern truth that I understood. A truth so unvarnished and naked it seemed to cut you as it licked you.

I stood silent and took it.

Afterwards, I came up to him and told him what a wonderful set it was. His eyes shown a real gratitude and humbleness that few show. "Why thank yo...." Then a fan interjected for an autograph and I let him be.
I drove home listening his new release at the time "West of Rome". He struck a chord with me that still is vibrating within me. It was that truth. That damned truth.

Whatever a man or woman does or doesn't do in their lives...it is the truths that they reveal is what matters. When I say truth, I do not care about lies. Most of our lives are lies. Our perceptions, the facade we show to the world, even ourselves. When we can summon the truth about ourselves and freely show it to the world. Those are the glimmers of essence of our true selves. It is then that we have achieved something. I'd like to think of heaven like that. Not a clouded and winged heaven glistening with gold, but a swirling glow of glistening truth.

I think Vic shown us a lot of truth. I hope I can. I hope I can let myself.

Masturbation and Blogging...

Hello everyone...and when I say everyone I mean you! The three people that read my blogs and the spammers who sell sunglasses and shoes.

First I want to apologize. I'm sorry I've been gone so long. It's just that I've equated blogging to masterbation. I'm mean, I'm all for taking care of business. Everyone has needs. I certainly have mine. A good wank/rub can relieve a lot of stress and tension. Writing does the same for me. This.

I suppose that's why I started blogging...and why I've decided to continue to do so. That's right...I'm fine with you watching. I don't know if you'll enjoy it, perhaps it's the act of being a voyeur...the pleasure is in the peeking...not exactly in the content.

Anyway...I'll be jerking off more frequently now...so if you want to watch you can. It's okay. You can even help. Lower. Faster...

Is this a dream? Or am I always dreaming and I'm actually awake for these few moments? Hmmmm...well...dream or not...can you pass me a Kleenex tissue? Thanks.

I'm finished...


Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile