Silence and the Wave...

Silence. Nothing can give me such polar emotions than silence. Silence will bring you relief and instill worry. "Aahhh..." Exhaling and releasing the remains of the day, only to be left in wonderment of "Why so silent? Is there a reason or a force at work that is creating this silence, and in fact...something wicked this way comes?"

Is silence simply a mirror of my insecurities? Some days nothing but a pure and wonderful emptiness, and other days a universe-size wave builds up to a crest and breaks upon my head, leaving me dumbstruck and paralyzed for days.

The chariots don't seem to swing low enough to carry me away, and my mountaintops aren't high enough for me to reach the threshold of the next. Even the Universe has a sound. Is there anything more unnatural than silence? Hence the pleasurable foreboding it invokes in me. In silence I turn inward. Looking at myself, I am mostly happy, and what is left might be the hope of what could be. Regret is just a compass point to navigate away from to find your true path. You need it to know where you don't want to go again...

8-Track Mind...

My mind is like an 8-track today. Lots of things to do, many hats to wear. I'm a Truckee Brother getting our stuff together to begin new days and adventure in the land of Truckeedom. I'm Atom Orr sending my new EP Los Feliz to VH1 for some hopeful synchronization use in one of their shows. I'm Christopher Hoffee scanning my lawsuit brought on by my credit card company because I'm simply not earning enough money to pay them from the economy that they ruined. I'm Cady/Hoff to my mate Patrick/Peat doing some business and brotherly things...a little file transfer here, a trip to the coffee shop here, some website html/php/java here and an escape to the matinee movies for air-conditioning and a summer blockbuster...emphasis on the "bust".

I know that's only four, but I operate in stereophonic sound, so that makes 8 tracks!

My first 8 track I bought...hmmm...maybe Van Halen I, or Styx "Pieces of Eight". Yea... that's right, I'm not gonna lie and say I got Brian Eno's "Music For Airports" instead. Too many wanna-be cool people these days pitch-correcting their lives into some kinda perfect nightmare.

Now what to do....hmmm...well I won't be using Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies Cards that cost $50.00 to help me decide... I'm gonna flip a coin or maybe use my own imagination...yep...I see an air-conditioned dark place with a convenient cup holder by my hand in my very near future.

Sorry Brian...I'm not picking on you. You're cool...Really you are.

Starlight...Lite Brite...

I miss my little budding-psychedelic-DIY-light-show-toy Lite Brite...oooh...and my Spin Art machine....a ooh and my Spirograph! Yea! I wanna make my next album cover from a Spirograph! Oh the physical world...the world of touch, the connection, the pleasure and the pain. I miss you too. Everyone's scared of getting their hands dirty these days. Let's get out the water hose spray down the lawn, make mud pies, sling dirt clods, hook up the Slip-N-Slide, fire off the water rockets that come down in a parachute, have Evel Knievel motorcycle races on someone's Yamaha 125, jump homemade ramps on our Huffy bikes with the big banana seats, climb that tree on the vacant corner lot where all the broken beer bottles are from the older kids hanging there at night, while I'm chasing fire flies and catching them and putting them in my jelly jar with some holes poked in the top made with a ball point pen...or hell...just smear the fire flies on my jeans so I glow in the dark for a few minutes....then we'll set up a tent in the back yard and get our flashlights, books, the PlaySkool record player and spin our 45's, eat strawberry and cinnamon Pop-Tarts until our parents tell us to shut up and go to sleep...but we don't. We quietly slide out our sleeping bags and star at the stars, make wishes, look for the big and little dipper and slowly fall asleep...

At least someone make an app for my Blackberry...I hear they have an Etch-A-Sketch one.

Mean Joe Green and Alvin...

"Angie" by the Rolling Stones and "Midnight Train to Georgia" by Gladys Knight and the Pips were on the top of the charts... I was 6 years of age and living in Pittsburgh, PA wearing my #75 Steelers jersey for my favorite football player Mean Joe Green. I had a neighbor next door to me...his name was Alvin. He was a teacher with a beautiful wife. They'd let me come in their duplex anytime I wanted. He taught me how to play chess. Took me to museums, the zoo, and the planetarium. He was a tall black man and I was a little blond haired, light brown-eyed boy holding his hand walking everywhere together. He used to love the way people would look at him when he took me out for our little field trips. This was 1973. This was a big deal. He was a brave, intelligent, and caring man. Someone to be proud of. I was, and still am. I wish I knew where he was. Maybe we could get in a game of chess and laugh about those uptight "Archie Bunker" types that seemed to rule the world back then.

Goeth Easteth...

Goeth Easteth thouest man of sprite age! That's what this white bearded old man told me. Oh wait, that was me talking into my bathroom mirror! Well...I am going East today for a short jaunt around the Southwestern region of the United States, thumping and plucking stringed instruments to the tune of delusional Poltzified dreams and stream of consciousness utterances of a crazy man. In other words...fun! The road, my heaven and nirvana. BOTH. That's right both! They are different things your know. Heaven is a "place" and Nirvana is in your "mind". So open up the roads and the car pool lanes! Lower the bridges and move the blockades! I'm bound and packed for high adventure!

**Trumpets sound! Timpani pound! Spirits soar...and stomachs roar!**

"How much money we got for some Southwestern Mexi?"

Zombies and Stains...

I love zombies..."Night of the Living Dead", "The Serpent and the Rainbow", Robert Rodriguez's "Planet Terror", to Zora Neale Hurston's "Tell My Horse", and now out... "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"! I wanna see that book made into a movie! I even love the 60's band The Zombies...you know the song..."Time of the Season". Do I love them as much as Rob Zombie? No. There is a limit...and that limit one zombie flick a year. But when it comes it's awesome!

I think I like zombies because it feels good to battle death...stopping those bastards in their tracks. Yea they keep coming...but we keep battling. Nothing like a good struggle. To quote Nikos Kazantzakis... "It is in man's struggle that we find salvation." It's not one of his more famous quotes, but I think it was his most important. I personally don't believe in death, but nor do I subscribe to the belief of Heaven and Hell. Our mortality, or rather ending our life as we know it, is our biggest fear, the unknown. Truly. I think "change" is a better word than death. We will no longer be as we once were...but is that so bad? Accepting our nature, and Nature is like the idea of someone holding your arms so you cannot move. You can perceive that you are being held against your will and it is a sort of Hell, or you can believe someone is giving you a hug and you could just stand there and be held forever in Heaven. Perception. I know I shouldn't use those words Heaven/Hell since I don't believe in them in the religious sense...but being raised Roman Catholic, one gets stained from their upbringing and religion. Especially something so ritualistic, visual and sensual as Catholicism. All those candles, incense, images, blood, and pent-up sexuality. Nothing will remove that stain until I'm gone, different beliefs and philosophical/moral conflicts will not wash it away.

I was talking about zombies wasn't I?

*smile*

Latency Ain't All That Bad...

The "Gotta Have Its" and the "Nows" need to chill out. There's something to be said about latency, the wait. Latency has such a negative connotation these days, but you know, sometimes we all need a little time for things to settle in, before we make up our mind, or have a tizzy fit about some technological slow down. This goes for everything, art, technology, relationships, nature, politics...ugh...don't get me started on politics.

The next time you freak out about how long you have to wait for a web page to load on their computer/cell phone think about it. It goes to a tower, to outer space, back to another tower, to a mainframe that then goes back to a tower, to outer space, to another tower then to you! The next time you get upset that your plane is delayed an hour or two, think about what it took for people to travel across n this country of ours on a covered wagon, going 3 miles an hour for 6 months and may or may not make it alive! The next time you hear a song or an album and after 20 seconds you've skipped on to something else, or a movie something like Stanley Kubrick made, or a book like Ulysses by James Joyce that would be panned immediately and then hailed later as a master piece. Remember all things are not made and should not be made for instant love and likability.

You gotta let these things breath and give sometime for it to sink inside you and stir around for a while. You may not know how happy you could let yourself be if you just gave it some time.

No...this was not inspired by anything personal, but merely observational, which I sometimes get lost in when while calming my own mind down or just having a real good bowel movement. I've saved the world many a time during it.

*laughing and couching*