Old Paintings Pt 4

Could be fighting, could be dancing

Could be they're the same

Like in some japanese movie 

Starring frenchmen from the renaissance

Duelling to their own delight  

Old Paintings Pt3

Gladiator turns to the emporer's stand

Submitting to bow, proud and fresh from the kill

Heart pounding as the roses fall around him

He thinks he might be famous

Old Paintings Pt 2

Did this one back in '99.  I think my main listening materials were Portishead's Dummy and Violator by Depeche Mode.  Both awesome albums.  

And I'd wager there was some NyQuil involved.  

Old Paintings

Something I painted back in '03 while listening to Pinchas Zukerman and the English Chamber Orchestra play some effin Four Seasons about 165 times.  It's one of my favorite recordings of all time.  Such energy and ease from one of the world's greatest violinists conducting one of Old Europe's finest chamber orchestras.  If you're of the bent, I highly recommend it.  Overwhelming intricacy, yes.  I used to just play it on repeat for about 3 hours each night.  The only time I got up from my little scribbling was to flip the record over.  Good times.  

Still not sure what the hell that's supposed to be.  Make of it what you will.  

I think it's skiing down a sunny mountain slope.  Zig-zagging your way through the day, snow-blind and ecstatic. 

Paul Simon - Paul Simon

Some time back, probably two years or so, Kara's mom donated to us her LP collection spanning the musical predilections of several decades.  Contained within these old busted-ass tapedup boxes were no end of oddities both pleasing and repelling.  They've fueled many a late night sing along, I'll tell you that.  What better litmus test can you offer a party comer than whether they find hundreds of totally random LPs fascinating and compelling and a fine reason to stay up till 6 am in joyous exploration...or boring and a reason to go home?  The LPs don't lie.  They're like a very smart dog.  They know good people.  They know bad people.  They also tell fortunes.  They're probably the most magical collective item I've ever encountered.   

Among them resides this one item of particular magic.  Paul Simon's first post-Garfunkel effort.  I'd heard some of the tracks before, but always on some afterthought best-of compilation.  But, as with all great artists, the best stuff lies between the exclamtion points.  I dug it out and threw it on the old turntable and was stricken up the turn-pike to New England, sweet New England.   The album wraps itself around you like a big furry hood and warms your cockles with a doleful,  genuine expression of effortless beauty that you really can't find just anywhere. 

It has all the characteristic harmonic and vocal lushness of Paul Simon's earlier work which we all love so well, bedded in absolutely flawless recording engineering.   Here's what I mean:  listen to the very first cymbal crash on the very first track.  It's like no other crash you've ever heard.  It's like jumping into a pool of molten brass.  That doesn't happen by accident.  I bet they recorded that one crash 906 different ways.  And old Paul knew which one was best.  That's what makes his recordings so stellar.  He  must be some kind of crazy perfectionist.  But look at the product! 

I will say that the record sounds better on vinyl than the remastered version  you can get digitally these days.  I don't know why technically.  I couldn't explain it in anything but hack-terminology,  but the roving, fretless bass lines and shimmering cymbal crashes tell the truth.  Vinyl's deeper. 

Nonetheless, you just won't find a bad sound on this record.  Every note is exquisitely in tune, every phrase a triumph of musicianship perfectly balanced against every other voice and sounding as natural as if it were happening right next to you.  It's filled with those tangential little moments where one voice jumps out of the ensemble and rips off a melody or variation of such supreme taste and poise and tonal mastery that you can't believe it and then before you know it three more have passed by and you have to listen all over again.  Yet it's not the least bit cluttered.  It's measured and accurate and without the slightest hint of clamor.  

The lyrics are poetic and darkly touching, evocative of feelings, places, and times.  My favorite track, Duncan,  is the monologue of Lincoln Duncan.  His father was a fisherman, his mother was a fisherman's friend.  And he was born of the boredom and the chowder.  So when he reached his prime, he left his home in the maritimes, and headed down the turnpike for New England, sweet New England.  It goes on with amazing poetry from there.  Check it.  For reals. 

There's a psychic element to his singing which conveys far more on a subliminal level than the words ever could.    That's a cliche for sure, but damnit it's true.  That's what good music does. It must be exhausting to keep that range of emotions in the front of your brain constantly so they can be summoned and excersized at will.  

The whole work moves like a dream, taking you through stories and personages you'd never imagined necessarily, but can thoroughly understand with some prompting from the narrator.  His inward and intricate discussion of wives, children, friends long lost, and tragic drug addictions are cold, bleak, and brutally human in their rawness.  The sweet harmonies and melodies and joyous outbreaks, however, move you up to a silver sentimentality you think must only come when one becomes very, very old.  

In a nutshell, it's the kind of album you put on, only to find yourself suddenly at the end, having lost time and space, and feeling wiser, better, far more at peace in this life.  

FND is not a phonetic equivalent of Fun Day.

Not even close.  That little cockmite off to the right there is a bastard.  

I spent the better part of two days sifting through a giant heap of coded malarky to put him on lock-down.  

That's where he was supposed to be.  But that's not where he was.  No, he was ducking behind the curtain of existence, pulling the long strings of semantics and time such that I might dance his dance, and discover his purpose.  

What a humble fellow, really.  He just initializes a variable.  Big Whoop.  

Ah, but he makes all the difference.  Who knew that A does not not equal B, even if A is null and B is not?  What precisely is the implication here?  Existance is never to be compared logically with non-existence?  What a piddling exception!  All taking consequence thousands of lines downstream from this minor oversight resulting in the mobilization of several humans who are miracles of coincidence in their own right. 

Everybody, that's who!  Everybody except the good man responsible for not appropriately placing this fellow on THIS side of the curtain.  Damn him.  Damn him good.  I can't have that time back.  Nor the inevitable toll taken on my eyes, my posture, and my sunny disposition.  

I did, however, get that old satisfaction from the sleuthwork involved.  That small satisfaction which allows me to continue doing this job without slashing my wrists and spinning around the room, arms outstretched, simulating some psychotic demon sprinkler or somesuch.  Long trial and error.  Hypothesis and experiment and good old fashioned legwork.  McNulty style.  Closer and closer you inch toward the isolation point.  Then one small twitch of the hand and it all falls back into ordered obedience.  

A nice thing, that.  If only. If only. If only the strings and levers and knobs of reality were as easily designed, diagnosed,  and manipulated.  I'm no more capable of such a feat in my reality than that humble bastard line of missing code was of knowing  there was some problem in the system of which he should have been a part, and that his very absence was indeed the problem.  Really, that's a lot to ask of anybody.  I mean, he didn't yet exist.  And one must never logically compare existence and non-existence.  And he's too humble for such thoughts anyway.  

But further, knowing where he needed to be, placing himself there, recompiling the system, testing it, and finding it suitable.  There, snug in his place and in the knowledge that he'd found his undeniable purpose in his world would he sit, content, at peace and at ease and working grandly with his neighbors as they carefully and stridently shuttle here and there the little bits to their appropriate memory allocations like bus drivers and crossing guards and pre-school teachers shepharding young children from home to school to their lovely little desks and back again, day in and day out.   In this reality, that would be nothing short of godlike. 

Yet despite his inability to do this, he has arrived by a hand as hidden to he and his neighbors as is God's hand to the eye of man.  

Hidden, yes, but highly significant.  His neighbors know how pivotal his arrival has been. 

They knew of the brokenness of their world.  It was, afterall, a fallen world.  Form without function,   body without life.  Its very existence only serving to cause more problems, when its intent and sole purpose for being was the solving of such problems.  The human condition pales in comparison really.  At least we can still fuck.  

Then he arrived, out of the blue, while the fabric of their reality shuttered and quaked and reset their memories of all things past... and upon awakening, all was well.  That grubby little bastard is none other than The Messiah of this discrete microcosm where formations of stored energy interact so precisely with flowing bolts of directed energy to some specific purpose.  Such niceties.  Such brilliance.  

And I, as the hand behind this drama and restoration of the broken world, must then be god.  And I so ignorant of the actual, fundamental workings of such a system.  I only interact on the highly abstracted superficiality of a linguistic framework.  Child's play, really.  No notions of how circuits or networks or of the physics and science required actually work.  And yet I hold such supreme power over these little beings.  What then does that mean about god?  

Craigslist FAIL!

That last entry is a copy of my sadly defunct attempt to unload what's turned out to be the most embarassing yet of my many public humiliations.

Personally, I blame the economy. First, I blame the bloated valuation of certain unamed yet publicly listed securities for the indulgence provided. Yes, I shamelessly and irresponsibly cashed in some paper-stuffs for the Glistening Machine. Now then, I only assume they exist in some paper form somewhere.


Not that I've laid eyes on said paper. No, I knew them only as little links which led to little pie charts and line graphs plotting out my prosperity curve and associated prospects of metawealth. At any rate, I sold them out like some kind-hearted yet dried out milk hefer on her way to the Happy Meal assemblage. And I was glad to do it. Yes, the fever knew no bounds. It's shameful really. I used to deride and cast wan snear upon the workaday lot sneaking about with their lusty desires for the material buzz. Motorcycles, Hah! Dentists and HR managers and such, seeking solace in shiny paint, glimmering chrome, and delusions of the thrill-ride. Ah, but I hadn't yet lived the cube life. It does weird things to ones thought processes. It saps and drains and distorts to an extent where such things seem not only reasonable, but necessary, deserved, and profitable.

Next, I blame Detroit. Sure sure, they didn't produce the folly, nor did they particularly encourage it. The place just sucks. It's the epitome of the rot inherent in the American Dream.

Seriously, there are trees growing out of the tops of downtown high-rises. And entire floors of said high-rises have been relegated to massive pigeon coops. Fascinating stuff.

Well this little pigeon now has a machine he's too afraid to ride. Is that better than some securities which have since become nearly worthless? Good luck, bad luck. Who's to say?


Lastly, again, I blame the economy. For now, I'm unable to sell this beast of a burden at a reasonable price. Every penny pinching bastard out there only offers the bottom of the bottomest price. Gas prices are back down. People are losing their jobs or whatever. Nobody wants to pay a reasonable rate to take it off my hands. Even the ones not included in that list pretend to be only as a bargaining chip and I just won't have it. I can't just flush money down the toilet afterall. So here we sit, scooter and I. Lovers at odds, with no conceivable way back to the fitfull infatuation. Once again: good luck, bad luck, who's to say? Perhaps I'll end up loving it anew and thanking the mighty christ in the sky that it stayed in my hands. Maybe then I'll have that nice accident which leaves me shattered of pelvis. Who's to say?