BOONDOCKS!!!

Is probably my very favourite cartoon and comic. One of the only lights I have in my life at the moment is that season three of the cartoon is going to start one week from today. That makes life bearable when it is all so very crazy. Here’s hoping, that by next Sunday night I’ll be sitting here all alone, with Oliver chillin’ upstairs, noone squatting in my basement, and just a couple of cool cats wandering about taking care of their important cat business.

I wish Aaron McGruder would be our next house-mate...

The Bad Week

This is teh eevill. The week of hell in our town. It starts with the “Townie Party” on Monday night. Now we must endure the madding crowds all week. And for those who insist that Art Fair somehow pays off in the long run I ask “Who pays for all the urine and trash collection?” Me. “Who pays for the week of cleanup?” Me. “who doesn’t make a fricking dime from Art Fair?” Me. FEH.

888th post

So this is it, the confluence I was mentioning before. I am posting this in time for my 8888th visitor. Also in a few days is the anniversary or birth date of the blog. It’s July 4, which is oddly, also the birth date of Nigel Patel’s blog. Only his is a year older than mine. Which if I’m not mistaken makes his coming up on 4 and mine coming up on 3, years old.

Nigel and I have many strange confluence's ourselves, then we will discover some (usually point of ideology) where we could not be more divergent. But he never rolls his eyes at me like the former roommate when this arises. Nor does he seem to take offense when I laugh WITH his interesting perspectives, never at.

But it is odd to think that when I started this blog that I hadn’t started school yet, and that few of my readers knew me before I was such a whiney cripple. I used to be much more vibrant you know.
The moral, of course being, don’t expect greatness from doctors especially surgeons who for the most part are overpriced plumbers.
As well as that good art and bad art are completely and irrevocably subjective and can never be proved definitively at all. That as long as someone made it, it’s art. And that, my friends, is the ONLY thing that counts.

Interfacing

Since Nigel has moved in we have gone on two, count ‘em two, outings. This is highly unusual for me. Being out in public, being around people. I think this issue is related to me not being able to register at a new school. I have my comfort zone that I can handle at school and it took a lot to feel OK there and I’m just a little too tired right now to do it again.

But anyway, I got off the bus at North campus and went to two different art shows. One was “Aging With Attitude”. All the artists were elderly or looking to their elderly future. There was some very cool stuff. This was sponsored by the “Blueprint On Aging” agency I was working for until last Thursday.

Then I went over to the “Inmate Art” opening. I saw some people I knew both on the walls and at the show. My old friends Randy and Kim for example. I can use their real names because he does all the framing every year and his name is all over everything. They and their myriad small people were hanging out. I had never even seen these small people before. It’s been a long, long time. I saw Buzz Alexander for the first time since probably 1986. I used to hang out with his kid. I saw a lot of familiar faces that I see around but don’t know personally.

The art was amazing. I only liked about a third of it, but even the stuff I didn’t care for was like getting constantly punched in the stomach. One of the most poorly executed was one of the most intense. Simple coloured pencil. A hooker in fishnets, working the purse, with 666 tattooed on her forehead. Standing next to a 6 eyed, 6 horned devil pimp working a phone and a fax machine. Various minions in the background. titled “Sealed For Life”. My girl can’t really draw but she knew exactly what she wanted to say.
Then there were several pieces by a guy named Frankie Davis. Way out of my price range or I would have bought one on the spot. There is a name for the style but I can’t recall it. Everything is done in coloured pencil. Everything is flat, no depth. No shading. Very stylized. I guess it’s considered some kind of primitive. One was the gardens of Iraq. Another was called “Opening Day” and was a cornfield. The corn is in rows going up, there’s no perspective. Very Incan and Egyptian. Then there were word banners where the crows were discussing the hunting. I can’t describe it, dancing about architecture and all that.
I looked him up on MDOC today. That makes it all the stranger.

Sleep Tight

I have what they call in the biz, fairly good sleep hygiene. Well ok, there are few knots. I wake up too much during the night and I do “stuff” in bed other than sleep. But when it comes to waking up, I’m a champ. I almost always wake up within a 45 minute span right around 7 am. No matter how late I went to bed (up till 3am anyway) or how drunk I got last night. That’s right baby, I got smashed last night. Woke right up at 7. Took a couple ibuprofen and I’m now having my cuppa tay.

See, really, at heart, I’m a big old drunk. It’s just that now I only let that girl out every four years or so. I love getting drunk. I’m not so fond of the three to four days it now takes me to recover when I get as drunk as I can though. Which is why last night was a total baby drunk (despite the seeming enormity of 17 glasses of champagne and a shot of fantastic vodka). As soon as I realized I was smashed I went home and made myself puke. In the old days it would have been time to start really drinking.

I never had such a penchant for drink until I used it to get off a much worse habit. Then I really hit my stride. I think what is so appealing about it is, that all the other drugs make me think really, really, hard. Alcohol makes me really, really stupid. When you live with a crazy busy, chattering, incessant, monkey mind it is really fun to essentially flip a switch and turn it off occasionally.

When I’m drunk I turn into Brother Martin. This is what the Rom traditionally called their dancing bears. I am slightly obsessed with Brother Martin, he shows up in my songs and poetry on a semi-regular basis. That’s because he is me and I am him. Along with spiders he’s one of my totemic folk.
Here’s a piece of a piece about him:

Brother Martin waltzes on the boulevard
Brother Martin waltzes gathering a crowd
for shiny, careless, pennies wrested from the mob
Brother Martin dances to the cymbalom.

If you think about it, blogging is totally a Brother Martin-ish thing to do.

On Patti Smith, Gender & Cohorts

I went to the Patti Smith concert. It wasn’t until today that I really was able to become coherent with my thoughts about some of the odd things she said between songs.

The first thing that struck me was when, after she sang “Kimberly”, she mentioned that it was the birthday of her sister for whom it was written. She then dedicated it to her and said “happy birthday Kimberly, wherever you are”. I thought “how strange, does she not have a relationship with her? Is she dead?” Because I only say that about people who are missing and presumed, deceased or long gone from me.

Later she was telling little stories about her relationship with Fred Smith. Let me state baldly that I am not a “worshipper” like many locals. Having done my time doin’ dirty deeds with M.D. I am so fully cognizant that those guys are just very, very, human. But I do respect them in a general way.
She told a story that when she was in disheveled Mom mode and the kids were dirty, Fred would walk on the other side of the street from them. Don’t get me wrong, she said it in a humorous and loving way. People laughed, cheered, whatever. Because it was an Ann Arbor crowd they got all excited that they could act excited about a local hero. She also intro’ed “Because The Night” by telling another story about how either they wrote it together or she wrote it for him (I get confused) calling him “a very good friend”. Which she then explained by relating how he once had said he wanted to introduce her for some award, she asked if he would say she was his wife, and he said he would say she was a very good friend. Meanwhile everyone is just gaga because she’s sharing stories of their idol “His Royal Majesty” Fred “Sonic” Smith. While I’m wondering if they are even stopping for one damn minute to consider the implications of what she is relating?

Because here is what it sounds like to me;
An internationally acclaimed poet/performer moves away from her career and life to marry and have kids with a somewhat famous, himself, guy. They/he seem to have some issues about gender roles and her success relative to his. Likely because they are from a particular (what I learned this year in Soc. is called) cohort, they don’t seem to be able to fully deal with a total equality based relationship thing. It’s not that I don’t think there was likely plenty of love, respect and creativity etc. I just got an urgent sense that she, in fact, subsumed some (perhaps largish) portion of herself to his personality. That it probably was a gender influenced decision, and that like many of my female friends who are getting older and more reflective she now has had an opportunity to gain a different take on it since he’s now been dead over a decade and her own career has resumed.

I looked around to confirm that they were both born in the 40’s. I think that this is a really tough place in time to have come from. Many of the people I know from that era have intense conflicts that no amount of decades of new and alternative thinking can resolve. I mean imagine that you have had a minimum of 20, and potentially up to 30 years of indoctrination in traditional gender roles when The Women’s Liberation Movement begins. It’s just likely to be too much to ever completely undo. Hell, I was born in the 60’s and those first 7 to 15 years of stereotyping still have a tremendous effect on me.

I guess what really bugged me was some creepy, unquestioning, adoration/celebrity factor. Whether it’s about her or him, the idea that some people don’t even question “stuff”, just blindly supporting a “cult of personality” mentality, not grasping that these people are ordinary, complex, heroic, flawed, poopin’, humans just like you and me. These issues are not really meant to be the stuff of titillating, celebrity gossip. Rather should probably be looked at and utilized to help liberate ourselves from restrictive role playing. I felt like her intention was to humorously and sweetly divulge and expose some quirky, uncomfortable, flaws and a lot of the people were just making it into a completely different thing. “Oh man, Fred Smith made Patti walk ten paces behind him haw, haw, he’s so cool”. It’s painful.
But other than that, I, Mrs. Lincoln, really enjoyed the play.

Gibby is the king of awesome

I just got a comp with "Movin' To Florida" on it (which I pretty much bought it for). I don't know why I think this is one of the best songs ever, I just do. I haven't even heard it, in like, 20 years and it's been haunting me the whole time. Well I just listened to it about 16 times and here as best as I can tell are the lyrics-

Moving To Florida The Butthole Surfers

I’m a’gonna move down to Florida
and I’m gonna bowl me a perfect game
I’m gonna cut off my leg down in Florida
and I’m a’gonna dance one legged, off in the rain

Well they say that Sidney Portier was a blind man
and they say that LBJ was a Soviet Jew
I tell that when I go down to Florida way
there ain't no kind of sexual healing that I would not, should not or could not do
I say this right here

Well I’m moving down to Florida
and you know that I’m a’gonna have to potty train the Chairman Mao
And I’m gonna make the governor write my doo-doo a letter child
And then I’m gonna grind me a White Castle slider outta India’s sacred cow

Well I’m goin’ down to Florida child huh huh
and I’m gonnna build me the atomic bomb
I’m gonna hold time hostage down in Florida child
ain’t nobody, ain’t nobody gonna tell me what to do, stepchild

By this time I guess you figured out about Florida
Turn the muddy water inta’ vaseline stained
They be making tadpoles the size of Mercury’s in Florida
That be telling Julio Iglesias what to sing now

Well whoever said that Sidney Portier was a blind man
knew the same of Elvis Presley too
Cuz all the sausages that dance like Ray Bolger on the hood of a car in a traffic jam
Know just exactly what to do - right here

Well I be going to Florida
pole cats and dusty seminoles son
You know that I’m in Florida
just like Vince I walk (unintelligible)
When I went down to Florida I got hurt
So I took all the children down to Florida
then I started to get lonely gee
Well I’m never going back to Florida
That's why I’m leaving J W
When I settle down in Florida
I’m a gonna explode the whole darn Tampa Bay
Get that boy in Florida
to teach me what to do

Road Music II

• The Best of Sam & Dave
• The Rolling Stones - Metamorphosis (My 4th favourite Stones album. The 1st being Beggars Banquet, the 2nd being - Her Satanic Majesties Request, the 3rd being - Some Girls.)
• The Big Three Trio (This was totally new to me, some kinda cool 40’s boogie, jump and blues that Oliver pulled out of his butt.)
• Rock At The Edge (My version)
• The Best of The Shangri-la’s
• Carwash The Soundtrack

This time I took pictures. I haven’t downloaded them yet as I am lazy. Well, and we got home really late with another big load of stuff to be brought in. Maybe tomorrow.

On a different note, while I’m nowhere near the 20 new songs I am hoping to write this summer our newest one is REALLY interesting..... Vocally it reminds me of Nick Cave, then there’s (another) very middle eastern influenced instrumental. It’s a sad one, surprise. Lyrically I really like most of it but I’m unhappy with the chorus. I am at a loss there but I’m sure it will come eventually.

Nitro did it again

This isn't working right....

Well this is supposed to go into my profile, but me being who I am I can't make it work correctly. Maybe I can get the nephew over to help me including making the URLs in the previous posts into hyperlinks. Clearly I can talk the talk but I can't walk the walk.
Note: This art of me is by Lissa Pederson

"And everythings a dollar in this box"

“besides, I never talk to strangers anyway”
Tom Waits


When I was first starting to write songs I prayed that I could be like Tom Waits. Please tell me, if Leonard Cohen has a pulitzer, why doesn’t he? Recently I was making a Tom Waits collection for my friend/lawyer/employer Lizard Breath and I realized that between David Bowie and Tom Waits, just the 2 of them alone, have written probably 40% of all my favourite songs.
If I had to pick one song each, this year it would probably be “A Soldiers Things” by Tom Waits and “Eight Line Poem” by Bowie.

I used to wish that I could ever do anything remotely as genius as Tom. I was deep in the throes of “A Foreign Affair” and the “Tom Waits Anthology” at the time and “Burma Shave” and “Somewhere” were just slaying me. To this day his version of “Somewhere” will break me down on the spot, (I’m not much of a weeper, I’m more a leaker). For some reason, which is as muddled as any of those evocatized memory triggers we all have can be, it makes me think of the relationship I both had and didn’t have with my Mom as she was dying for 13 years. Tell me that wouldn’t kick anybody's ass.
Anyway, as I was wishing, praying and cogitating on just what made him so very exceptional, I began having great difficulty singing. In retrospect I know that the most likely reason is that I was working a phone job, as well as performing and rehearsing a lot without having had any formal training. I get this, but I find it really amusing looking back, that for all that wishing, what I ended up with was - singing like him. For two years I had chronic laryngitis. Luckily Evil Pete had been on the road for the Vertical Pillows and had learned a remedy for when the show just had to go on.

Here tis:
Separate an egg
feed the yolk to the cat or something
Stir the white and add a few drops of peppermint or wintergreen oil
Sip whenever necessary to vocalize clearly, it really works.

Here’s the drawback, as can be surmised, it tastes like holy hell. Also, I can assure you that throwing a little dark beer in only makes matters worse. For two years I had to steel myself to it on a regular basis. Gahhh. It also gives you the most peculiar peppermint burps. Of course nowadays most people are sensible enough to NOT EAT RAW EGGS on the advice of some TWIT on the inter web AREN'T THEY?

So there you have it, and I think its worth a dollar, my advice is to NEVER, EVER eat raw eggs except when you’re eating raw eggs.

On laziness and creativity

Yummy, porch sitting whilst a thunderstorm carouses. Here is why I wanted this laptop, so I could hang out on the porch in the all too brief summer of Michigan and play.
One of my most favoured and all too decadent activities is to lay on the couch out here, play solitaire or psuedo-intellectual blog lurker, and just lean over to flip the burgers.

So, I was reading someone's latest entry and they were questioning the ”how to” of song writing.
I thought that rather than respond in their comments thus taking up a ton of their personal space and time, that I would discourse here, as it was something I would’ve addressed eventually anyway.

It’s been really exciting to have found someone that I can write well with. It took a long time as I never thought to define what I was actually seeking when I first started out. I was then mostly, just viewing myself as a singer. I didn't actually believe I could be a "real" songwriter. It turns out that that was stupid, because I’m not that great of a singer, and have really only vastly improved over the last 5-6 years. In spite of having been born with a decent voice, singing, for me, has become a means to an end. The end being able to put my writing to music. Which, it seems, is one of the only ways to get heard if you are not fond of, or suited to, the new word salad, poetry slam type of performance art. I am vastly unsuited to that, by writing style, temperament and probably, sadly, age.

When I first started writing with “real musicians” I was overawed and naive about what a singer/lyricist means. I thus believed what people thrust upon me, that as the two former, in addition to being a female, I was on the bottom on the pyramid. The mere canary. Throw fat girl into that mix, and I emerged with a fairly serious inferiority complex. I think this is potentially why I sometimes preen just a tiny bit too much when I’m cranking out some decent stuff.

During my years with Skinflower I put out a few good songs, I did a lot of vocal arrangement. I wrote a few songs with a few other folks, writing to their music. Sometimes sizing something I had already written to fit. It seemed OK but it really wasn’t.
I realized later that I was constantly having to try to fit preconceptions of what was cool. And not surprisingly I couldn't seem to get the juices flowing at any constant rate for any length of time. I feel I was viewed in a patronizing, owner/ master fashion and was severely critiqued constantly.

I started writing with Oliver, everything was different. He handed me about 200 hundred songs and lyric ideas, then left it primarily up to me. So over the years I’ve been able to just listen to a bunch of different music he’s written and work on whichever tune grabs me at that very moment. Sometimes he’s been taken aback at my completely changing the idea and meaning of something. Sometimes we’ve had to argue for several days about whether he’s going to write me a hook or not. We’ve had creative differences, absolutely. The real difference though, has been that if there is an issue, it’s actually about what’s best for the song itself. Not whether the words are creepy and/or sarcastic enough for the misanthropic guitar player. Or whether the wannabe hipster gets it or not.

I also feel that maturity has really redefined what I think is important enough to write about. Not that we don’t write some goofy stuff. I’d just like to think that the humour is broader and more subtle. Now, since I've had the opportunity to find my very own voice, I can write fairly easily to other peoples music as well. I had also recently worked with another composer and we had written some positively stunning pieces. Unfortunately Junk reared its ugly head and he’s no longer in my life. Very sad, I hate that shit with a passion.

Which brings us to another facet of the creative process that I’ve been debating with some of my much younger musician friends recently. Drugs and creativity. My stance is that the whole “it’s a really necessary part”, is pure bunk, hogwash and myth. Probably perpetuated by Junkies and drunks who seem to love nothing more than taking people down with them.
My view is that time spent pursuing drugs is time lost to creativity, time spent attempting to reach “just the right buzz” is time that could be spent practicing scales while you wait for the muse to show up. I feel that the Kurt Cobains, Billie Holidays and such would have been able to bless our existence at least equally and probably far better without. I don’t believe drugs illuminated them, other than for an evanescent moment or two. And those few moments are swallowed whole by the years of misery.
And I say this from the perspective of someone who is pretty sure they know of what they speak.

Wow, sure like the feel of my favourite soapboxes, I might get mighty comfortable up there, I could probably just go right ahead and take a nap.

Ahem....

So it arose and it was scary to do. But I plunged, as one must, without really testing the waters.
The actual title is "The Sunday Morning Subtle But Obvious Organized Self Abuse Swim Club". And yes, apparently I snagged it before any of the people that were there at the time did, at least around this cyber location. Not that I would mind hearing from any of you who were there, even briefly, at Stoners Blough, Michigan
I do want to make something abundantly clear:
I never took a proper English class past 7th grade, and while just recently I have been learning some grammer fundamentals, due to having taken up a new language, other than it being helpful to learn the proper names of parts of speech in order to learn a different grammer, I dont care.
My spelling is decent, my punctuation is primarily, self invented. I write a lot of songs and poetry where I get to make it up as I go along. At least in my belief system I get to make it up. If your belief system tells you differently, well, that's nice for you.
I have also never taken a proper science or math class since 7th grade, again, I'm making it up as I go along.
I understand that there are people who just have a really hard time with that, that's nice, you're entitled to be rigid or secure or confident or enjoy whatever comforts those systems bring you. I have a bit more of a "by the seat of my pants" approach.
Which is actually kind of ironic as I never wear pants, unless you're English, in which case I almost always do.
The point being if there is some fascinating discourse to be had, fun, swell, and hoopty-do, but I really don't want to dicuss my punctuation and grammer with almost anyone, the notable exceptions being my former or current English teachers.